As I had mentioned in a previous post, loads of awesome friends and family nominated my for the Live for Pink contest that DownEast Outfitters had going on in October. I was so excited to win! I went on on Channel 4, Good Things Utah with Ginger from Happy Chemo and Klane the CEO from DownEast Outfitters, who was just about the nicest guy you will ever meet. There was one other winner from Utah who also went with me. They are lucky I was somewhat responsive, I had to be at the news station at 6 AM – which means I wasn’t really awake until 8:00 AM-ish, luckily I chugged down a cup of coffee on the way to the station. You can watch the news clip here ->
I didn’t get a chance to mention that I also planning on donating a portion of the grant to Metavivor, an organization that focuses it’s funds on metastatic breast cancer research. The rest is going toward a trip to Europe in the spring which Mike and I have been putting off for the last 5+ years. Now we are really going to do it! Woohoo! I do want to stop in Rome, but the rest of the what and where is up in the air right now. 🙂
The gift basket I won included a gift card to DownEast Outfitters (I may have ended up spending more than my gift card, haha). It also came with a lot of goodies that will be helpful for when I start chemo (and some helpful stuff for the infusions I am getting now). It also came with a brand new pillow, which I was pretty excited about. My mom bought me a new pillow when I was diagnosed the first time, and that pillow is a tad bit worn out 4 years later. There was a gift card for a bed and breakfast in Kalamazoo, Michigan. We did not initially plan on traveling to Kalamazoo, but it includes meals, strawberries with champagne, massages and all sorts of spoiling. So Mike and I are going to just do it, and travel to Kalamazoo. It sounds fun (when it is warmer of course – Michigan does not sound super lovely in winter).
Amy came with me to DownEast Outfitters to be my shopping assistant:
Hard to pick what to buy!
World’s best shopping assistant
Our helpful sales assistant
Shopping!
The clothes I bought. Remember how I said I like black and white and neutral colors? Lol!
Thursday my oncologist called me to tell me that my cancer cells have now become HER2/nue positive. So the mutant breast cancer cells went ahead and mutated even more. I went from ER+ PR+ HER2/nue- to ER+ PR- HER2/nue+ (when you hear about triple negative breast cancer, it is negative on all of these receptors, since there are three they look for). Which explains why it was growing so fast all of the sudden! HER2 tends to grow faster (plus I have grade 3 cells, which also grow fast). There are targeted treatment options for this specific receptor, so they can now go after the estrogen and HER2 receptors. The bummer part is that I now have an even more aggressive form of the disease. This is going to change up my treatment plan a bit, I meet with my oncologist to plan what will happen on the 11th – it also makes me no longer eligible for that study we were looking at. There are a lot of HER2/nue studies though. So we will figure it out!
I am halfway through radiation. Friday evening I started to really feel the pain in my back decrease. We went to a Halloween party and I stood around and sat in chairs for many hours. This normally would have aggravated my back really bad and I was just fine. I was pretty excited about that! I also woke up Saturday not feeling sore (mornings are usually the hardest). I went to a soccer game and wore myself out Saturday night, so I have been sore today, but so far this is a big improvement! 😀.
