A New Cocktail!

Since my surgery I have been so busy or exhausted or not in the mood to write, so quite a few things to fill you in on!

Non Medical Update:

My best friend from elementary and middle school from my school in Hawaii, Lexie Lam (now Lexie Cox), came to spend three days with me after my surgery to give my mother a break to go see her parents in Abilene, Texas and to take me to all my appointments and do the things that I couldn't do because my left arm was out of commission. We had a great time and laughed so hard, I am still in a fabulous mood. Nothing like friends visiting to make you forget about the fact that you are just a little lopsided now :) I know many of you have expressed interest in visiting, and I just wanted to reiterate the welcome if you want to come. Just tell me the dates you are thinking about and I will tell you if that works!


I booked a trip to go to back to Hawaii May 23-June 8th (yay!). I haven't seen the men in my family (besides my hubby) since I was diagnosed. Although my father could have come here, he travels horribly and immediately gets sick, which I can't have with a low blood count. This June, my brother and father leaving Hawaii are spending the summer traveling around the pacific in a mega yacht, and of course I can't go and I am totally jealous. So, I will see them in Hawaii before they take off, and I am pumped to see all my friends, go to the Waimea Community Theater, crash my Tahitian class, and paddleboard if my arm will stand it :)

Medical News:

As I posted before, the mastectomy was a success. Anne Brown, sent me a wonderful flower bouquet in the hospital.


Back to Stage IV Cancer - Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

Rather than having chemo on Wednesday, my doctor ordered a needle biopsy of some lymph nodes he could feel in my neck, and of course they came back positive for cancer. Which means I am back to being a Stage 4 Cancer patient. Boo.

I wasn't surprised. What else were they going to be? On the positive side, however, this gives us a baseline, or something to monitor to see how my chemo was working. Had they been negative, the only way for us to monitor the effects of the chemo would be to know it is not working by having a large tumor grow somewhere else in my body. Now, if they get smaller, we know that the chemo is working! I don't have to wait for something to grow in my liver or bones or brain.

My New Cocktail

I had had my first post-surgery chemotherapy treatment yesterday, and as of now (5am the next morning) I am feeling okay:) The Red Devil might not have done much to my cancer, but that kicked my butt way farther in terms of side effects.

Granted, chemo is cumulative and there is usually a delay of a day before you start feeling like crap, but this is feeling pretty good. There are a lot of allergic reactions related to Taxotere and Herceptin, the two drugs I am getting now, so they pump me full of steroids, which explains why I have been up since 2:30am.

If anything saves my life, it is going to be Herceptin. It only became available 6 years ago in the states (and 1 year ago in New Zealand, for all the Kiwis out there). As a memory jogger, my tumor is HER2-neu positive. 25% of breast cancers are in this category, and until this drug became available, it was pretty much a death sentence as it was so aggressive and responded very stubbornly to chemo (as shown by my lack of response to my first chemo cocktail). Even if the cancer disappeared, us HER-2neu postive people relapsed much faster than other patients with breast cancer.

So . . . I am looking forward to see what happens! Thanks again everyone for reading my blog and posting comments. It means a lot to me!