Progression, You are the Darndest Thing

Please disregard posts about college writing. Someone was kind enough to hack my blog and post some crappy posts, I thought I had updated the password and apparently I didn’t hit save. Great that the great bots/hackers of the world feel like attacking a breast cancer blog. Thanks guys.

I usually know when my body is progressing, my tumor markers lend to it, but I sort of had a feeling that my cancer was spreading again. I am frustrated that all of the treatments this year have not done much and my cancer has kept spreading more and more along with my tumor markers creeping up and up and the question in the back of my mind that it keeps asking is “am I dying?.” Not that I feel like any of my friends who have passed away recently have had much of a heads up, or maybe they knew and they just weren’t talking about it… I hate this. I feel like I have been in a downward trajectory and I am just looking for that miracle that is going to give me another year, another two years until the next miracle drug comes out… something, anything. There are so many drugs in the pipeline, but my body has to stay healthy and I have to be able to take them.

My PET-CT was exactly what I didn’t want to see. My left side had been giving me some horrific pains that had me in tears. I had been coughing and had some shortness of breath. My blood oxygen had been running low here and there (I even bought a little meter to monitor it awhile back). I had some fluid that showed up and it shrank before. Now it was VERY fluidy, my lung looks like a sad little raisin. I go in in the morning to drain the pleural effusion. I am going to ask my lung dude about whether or not I should get a catheter for now based on how much fluid is in there… not that I want one, but I also don’t want my lung to have THAT much pressure around it.

Kind of a fuzzy photo. The right side is my left lung. The black area is what is actually processing air at the moment.

Kind of a fuzzy photo. The right side is my left lung. The black area is what is actually processing air at the moment.

The other not so happy news is that I have real grown up tumors in my liver now. I had areas that glowed a bit in the past like tumors were trying to form, but I did not have a tumor in the CT scan. Now I have a tumor that is at least 1.13 cm I believe (still waiting on the report). My liver counts had been bouncing around, which was questionable, but they had been normal the last couple of appointments.

Spots throughout my skeleton look worse. Sadly, nothing looks a tad bit better, so I am hoping SOMETHING shows up in the report as looking better, otherwise Xeloda was one big bust (I got the report: Xeloda was a bust, everything progressed, we have an MRI coming up on the 12th too).

Bad news is draining… My oncologist had me quit Xeloda today until we decide on the next step.

The plan is to try to get data out of the effusion. Test my cells that are in there and see if they are still estrogen positive, test if they are still HER2+, send cells to Foundation One and try to see if I can get matched to any studies that make sense or any drugs that exist for the weaknesses my tumor has that they are aware of.

One day at a time. One day at a time…

Minion Mandi

Minion Mandi

Author: Mandi

Share This Post On