Weekends with Help, Scans, and What's Next

Hello all! After a week of feeling low with the cold, a weekend visit from my mom for some relief on the homefront (thank you!!!!!!!!!), subsequent long overdue downtime for Jim, and another round of chemo, I actually feel a bit more normal today!

I spent the weekend half asleep, while my mom ceaselessly played with Bug, and did endless rounds of dishes. Jim tucked himself away downstairs for a long while playing Spore (a new video game) and decompressed after 4 months of a hamster wheel run, and I watched it all go down from my sofa in between naps. It was very nice.

Today, is post-chemo day #1. I think this marks number 13. EVERY week. Wew. Endurance. I AM A CHAMPION! hehehehe. You have to do this to keep this up! I am really hoping that those scans return some good news and I am not endlessly on chemo. It is hard not knowing when it will end. I don't read breast cancer stories too much. They get me testy. 8 rounds, ONCE a month and then they are done????? OH MY GOSH. I wish! Or excited posts from women who say "I am so excited, I am on session 6, I only have one more to go and I am done!" I had NO idea it could be that easy. I am glad I didn't going in. I set myself up with an open-ended, need endurance to ge through this, mind set. Had I read those other stories, I would've been frightened at how I get the "unknown time span" card.

But we are to the point we are ready to do more scans. She said a PET/CT I think. Not the WHOLE slew again. No bone tests, or MRI's. Just the PET is her reccomendation. I think I should've asked more questions. I have them. Like....why not the MRI (beyond her answer of, "I think PET says more.".). There is debate. MRI's DO no harm. PET's put radiation in my and use xrays. All damaging. As one doc put it "You are in this for the long haul. We want you to have a thyroid that is working in ten years". So I have more questions.

But, it will tell me how sites on my liver, lymph nodes, and breasts are doing. We can tell the ones in the breast are so diminished we can't feel them. Same with most of the lymph nodes, I can't find those either.

I asked her the question that has had me worried since the beginning. "If one is going down, is it typical that ALL the sites are going down. It isn't like one will go away and one will spread?" She said typical they do all go down. One doesn't typical head off in it's own direction. However, (ugh, there is it) I have two types of cancers in me. BOTH breast cancers, with one very small difference. She said it shouldn't really mean one will go away and one won't. AND (this is the good part) she can tell from palpations, that it appears both tumors are receeding.

Now folks, this is what I want. I want to be done with chemo. I don't know what will happen if it is all gone. My intuition says they are going to want to keep going for awhile to get what they can't see (as long as my body holds up). If that happens, I will need a FLUX of good vibes to raise me back up and call back my endurance. I am having an easier time with this than most people, but I am also run down now. I am getting run down. SO, I will need the loudest, most peepy, YOU CAN DO THIS cheering squad.

The other scenario is that they see some small spots left, and keep going. Again, same thing holds true as what I just said above.

OR WHO KNOWS, what if they can't find a THING (shock!) and the say YOU ARE DONE. Just come in now once a month for you Zometa and Herceptin???????? hmmmmmmmmm.

Do some praying. PRAY PRAY PRAY it out.
Jenna