Kicking Cancer’s Ass

Step one: Port & MRI- Monday April 20^th

Thanks to my dad we were able to enjoy a super fancy steak dinner at Elways in Denver the night before. Tony was in food heaven! I enjoyed a steak myself but I especially enjoyed the dessert. :) 



The worst part of the Port procedure was not getting to drink water 6 hours prior. As you all know us Days are weirdos about our water. We are never without our Nalgene bottles and I drink water all day long, usually at least once in the night and definitely first thing in the morning. I was not thrilled that I couldn’t have any water after 6 AM. But it is what it is. The best part is, I didn’t have to wake up until 6:30 AM. At 5:58 AM I woke up naturally, looked at the clock, did a fist pump in the air and downed some water! I had 2 minutes to enjoy the glorious H20, which I took full advantage.

The port was a piece of cake. I was put under so  I didn’t feel anything! I had a nice conversation with the nurse that got me prepped, she had breast cancer recently and told me not to worry. They had told me I might be awake for it or I might be out. The second I felt groggy I pushed to fall asleep. Again, out of sight out of mind for Kelli.

Tony met me after in the recovery room with a delicious bagel- it had been awhile since I made my body go that long without any breakfast and it was letting me know that. As for the port, I wasn’t in pain, I felt fine and was good to go. 

That afternoon I had a breast MRI and that was a different story. After waiting for over an hour (one of their machines broke). They told me that I may not want to have an MRI that day since my port was so fresh and I would have to lay on it. Oh thanks guys. Well sorry, I am here and I am not coming back to Denver (which is 3 hours from where we live) so let’s try it. Thankfully it was fine as far as pain of the port.

I am claustrophobic. I have never had to really test that but when big Tony wraps me in a blanket and sits on me I do not like it, even knowing I could escape whenever I needed. So I was really really really not excited about the MRI but like everything else on this journey you just got to learn to get through things and accept it. 

About 10 minutes into the scan the tech stops the scan and starts to talk to me through the headphones I have on. Umm,  a little weird. She starts to ask me questions about my chemo and when will it begin. I didn’t know why she was pausing the test to ask me these things and I sure wished she would have asked these questions prior to the scan but okay.

About 5 minutes later she stops me again and actually comes into the room to start to ask me about my treatment plan.

This happens about 3 more times and I am starting to flip shit. All I can think is that they’re reading my tests and not seeing good stuff and that’s why they’re actually stopping to ask me this stuff. Why else would they have not asked me prior to the test? This is making it really hard to stay still and not have a full on panic attack. The MRI was horrible. If you have to get an MRI sometime, it won’t be horrible, you’ll be just fine, just know they aren’t actually reading your results right then and there.

Afterward she told me that apparently I was on day 3 of my period which she noticed after she began the test. I guess they never do breast MRIs on the third day of a period because your boobs look different. So she had to call the radiologist to ask what she wanted to do and the radiologist needed those questions answered to eventually decide that my cancer diagnosis overruled that random 3 day rule. So no, they were not reading or analyzing my scans at all. But man did that stress me out!

The next day I got the results back and it came back great. There was no other cancer spotted outside of that one lump for either breasts.

Step Two: Chemo-begins 5/13/15

I will go through 8 weeks of A/C, which stands for two drugs: Adriamycin and Cytoxan. This will be given to me every other week for 8 weeks (4 total doses) via my port. I will do this at Valley View Hospital, which is like a super rich ski lodge. Apparently these 8 weeks will be the worst. These are the harshest drugs and will affect me the worst (meaning possible fatigue, nausea, etc.). I will lose my hair about 2-3 weeks after chemo begins.

After this 8 week plan I will then do weekly doses of paclitaxel (aka: taxel) for 12 weeks. This drug is a lot nicer and so things should be a lot better during these 12 weeks.So that’s it, I just got to get through 8 crappy weeks of chemo and then "smooth sailing" for 12 weeks. 

Step Three: Surgery & Radiation
After chemo I will do surgery and what surgery I do will depend on the chemo and a few other things. Depending on what surgery I choose will determine if I do radiation or not.