This past week has been going okay. This time the side effects were mostly nausea, and then I got a yeast infection AND a UTI, so I had to take antibiotics.
But I didn’t get the crazy diarrhea like last time… thank goodness!!!
I’ve also been having some hot flashes from the Lupron injection, but they haven’t been too bad. Mostly I’ve been feeling super anxious lately and just wanting to sleep a lot and not do anything.
Oh! I also went to the wig place to try on wigs.
OMG.
The wigs were awful.
They had very few lace-front wigs. Instead, a lot of them had some kind of plastic with the fakest-looking hairline. I felt like I was putting a helmet on my head like Mr. Potato Head.
And not only were they ugly, they were crazy expensive! The synthetic ones I tried started around $350, and the one human-hair wig I kind of liked was $750.
Whoaaaa.
Of course I would gravitate toward the most expensive one.
But finding out it was real human hair gave me the heebie-jeebies. Like… what if the wig is possessed? LOL.
It reminded me of a funny story about my friend. She was visiting me in Vegas, and we went to Manolo Blahnik because she was looking for a particular boot she’d seen. She’s a tiny size 5, and apparently there was a shopper in Japan who got first dibs on all the size 5 shoes. They would literally send her the collection in Japan so she could pick what she wanted, which meant there weren’t many boots left for my friend.
The sales associate said, “Oh, but I have one boot you might like.”
He put it on her and started explaining what it was made from…
Blah blah blah…
EEL SKIN!
Hahaha. You should have seen my friend’s face.
EWWWW.
She looked like she was going to gag and basically said, “Take this boot off of meeeeeeee!”
That’s pretty much how I feel about human-hair wigs.
So I ordered some synthetic wigs from Amazon instead. I’m wearing one right now that I actually like, and the best part is…
It was only $25!
I have to work on it a little—cut off the lace, pluck the hairline and cut some baby hairs to make it look more natural. There’s this whole world of wigs I’ve discovered on YouTube.
I had NO idea how much work goes into this!
Anyway, I’m almost halfway through today’s chemo. It was pretty busy in the waiting room, so I didn’t start my infusion until almost 10 a.m.
I got Perjeta and Herceptin first, plus some Ativan to calm my nerves. Now it’s 11:30 a.m., and I’m getting some extra-strength anti-nausea pre-meds before starting the actual chemo drugs.
I’ve started looking at chemo differently.
Instead of thinking of it as poison, I’m trying to think of it as medicine.
Medicine that’s helping me.
Medicine that’s hopefully saving my life.
Which leads me into how I found out my cancer was Stage IV.
I’m still trying to process this part. I have so many questions, so many what-ifs, and just so many crazy thoughts running through my head.
Before I met my oncologist, I felt like I could beat cancer because I thought I was Stage II. My breast surgeon had told me that Stage II was curable and that Stage IV was not.
I’m sure she was trying to comfort me.
And I really hung on to those words.
I first met my medical oncologist on November 26, and I immediately loved her. She walked into the room with such a positive energy, and I remember feeling incredibly lucky that she was going to be my doctor.
She asked about my history—when I first felt the tumor, whether I had any other symptoms—and then started going over what my treatment plan would look like.
She explained that my treatment would include Herceptin and Perjeta and that she thought I could have a good response to the HER2-targeted therapies.
There was so much to go over.
How did I feel about my fertility? Did I want to preserve it?
I needed chemo class, more bloodwork, tumor markers, a heart test to make sure my heart was strong enough for treatment, surgery to place my chemo port…
And finally, a PET scan to see whether the cancer had spread anywhere else.
She also asked if I wanted to try cold capping to save my hair.
YES.
Cold capping felt like my one saving grace.
I had no control over anything else that was happening to me, and I thought that if I could at least save my hair, maybe I’d be able to deal with this whole cancer thing a little better.
If I could look in the mirror and not look sick, I thought that would help me immensely.
After a lot of back and forth with insurance to get authorization, I finally had my PET scan on December 9.
The scan itself wasn’t painful. I was injected with a radioactive tracer and then had to lie very still for about an hour before going into the scanner. The scan took about 25 minutes, and I actually fell asleep for part of it.
Since I was signed up for the patient portal, I got my PET scan results the next day.
I opened the report.
And my heart sank.
They had found at least three lesions in my liver that were considered metastatic.
I felt like someone had punched me in the gut.
I immediately started sobbing and shaking. It felt like the end of the world.
I think everything finally came pouring out at once—all those weeks of being anxious and scared, all the tests and scans, the biopsy and port surgery, getting stuck with needles over and over again, having radioactive shit injected into me…
It was too much.
I’d been in denial for so long, and suddenly I couldn’t be anymore.
Luckily, I was at home.
My next appointment with my oncologist was December 11.
Even though I’d already seen the PET scan report, hearing the words from my doctor made everything feel real.
We were talking about metastatic breast cancer now. Stage IV.
There was no longer a conversation about curing my cancer. We were talking about treating it.
She wanted me to have a CT scan and a biopsy of one of the liver lesions to confirm that what they were seeing in my liver was metastatic breast cancer. There were also other suspicious areas, including lymph nodes in my left armpit and above my left collarbone.
And then there was another blow.
Because I was going to be in treatment much longer than we’d originally discussed, cold capping was no longer part of the plan.
😞
I left that appointment with a really heavy heart.
I wasn’t feeling very hopeful anymore.
I started doing what I’ve been doing ever since this began:
Researching.
I read about Stage IV breast cancer. I searched for people living with metastatic breast cancer. I watched YouTube videos and found bloggers documenting their experiences.
I was looking for someone whose story looked like mine.
I found people who were still thriving years after their metastatic diagnosis, and that gave me hope.
But searching could also be terrifying.
Sometimes I’d find someone’s vlog and start watching their videos. Then something would tell me to click on their most recent one…
And that’s when I’d discover that they had died.
It made me sad that they didn’t make it.
And, of course, it made me wonder about my own prognosis.
I’m still reading. Still researching. Still trying to understand what all of this means.
I know Stage IV breast cancer isn’t considered curable.
But people are living with it.
Some people have complete responses and reach NED—no evidence of disease.
So maybe I’ll be one of them.
Maybe I’ll be that miracle.
At the same time, I’m trying to be realistic.
It’s funny. An old friend once told me I was the most idealistic person he’d ever met.
I guess the circumstances have changed.
Thanks for reading along.
I’ll write again as soon as I can. 🙂
I’m now done with Chemo Day #3, and it’s only 2 p.m.! 😜
XOXO
