Chemotheray Treatment #4!!

Had my 4th and final chemotheraphy treatment yesterday and so far, so good. Dr. Muss (pictured) was still quite perplexed over my recent drug reaction, so he tweaked my treatment a little. He switched out my Taxotere with Abraxane which has less of a potential for rash. Dr. Muss also cancelled my Herceptin yesterday, and I'll receive a Neulasta shot today to ensure my white blood cell count stays up and I don't have another episode of Neutropenia and a stay in the hospital. In regards to my red blood cells, I'm still a little anemic, which accounts for much of my fatigue.

In an odd twist of fate, I knew 2 of the other women in my "pod" yesterday, one is a colleague of Charlie's and one is a friend of a friend who recognized me previously from reading this blog. We had an interesting discussion on the progession of the understanding of our pathology and treatment plan. Think about it. I "officially" knew I had cancer on January 7th, had two surgeries in January but did not find out about the pathology of my cancer until March 3rd. Although I knew immediately I was node negative, I still had to wonder what else was going to come my way. Then when I did learn of my pathology, it's a whole new language and it sounds bad - HER-2Positive, ER/PR Postive, High Grade, and on and on. This all sounds bad - you don't associate the word positive with something good when receiving cancer news and it takes a while for it to sink in that all these things are good because they allow you to fight the cancer with even more drugs - and the more tools in your toolkit, the more successful you are!

So, it is with this positive thought that I finished my fourth and final treatment yesterday and look forward to continuing my Herceptin treatments for another 10 months and moving on the Hormone treatment after that! I just keep remembering that all these treatments combined contribute to the reduction from 32% to 5% for the chance of a relapse and from 13% to 3% for non-survival over the next ten years. All I have to do is combine that with a dedication for 1/2 hour of daily exercise and 5 servings of fruits and vegetables which according to a recent study will increase my survival rate and I'll be all set!