Oncology, Part 1

It's only been a few days now, but it really feels like I live at the hospital.
My nurse at the oncology office is my aunt, so I feel very comfortable with that situation. She offered to keep my mom in the loop so I don't have to for now. I'm really thankful that she is willing to do that, because I could regurgitate everything I tried to absorb from today's visit on this blog, but I really don't have the energy to do it over and over again.
So, without further ado:



I'm waiting for a call to schedule my PET scan. I'll get a nice injection of radioactive sugar, and a nice nap inside a big white tube for about an hour. Then the nice radiologists (or whoever reads those things) will see if my 8cm x 5.2cm x 3cm alien invader has decided to hold a community outreach on any nearby organs/bones. We're pretty certain that it's spread to a few nearby lymph nodes, but we're crossing our fingers that nothing else is affected.

I had the echocardiogram today. Basically, a cute girl pressed a big plastic thing all over my chest for about 20 minutes. It was the most boring thing that's happened to me all week. I'll get one of those every 3 months to make sure the chemotherapy doesn't fix one thing and break another.

After my PET scan is finished (probably this week/Saturday,) I'll have an appointment with my very chipper breast surgeon. She gets to insert an semi-permanent IV port which attaches to an artery in my chest to deliver the chemotherapy drugs. While I'm not struggling (unconscious,) she'll also biopsy the lymph node in my ridiculously ticklish armpit.

My oncologist wants to let this heal for about a week or so, and then we'll start chemotherapy.

I'll have a cocktail of Taxotare, Paraplatin (carboplatin), and Herceptin every 3 weeks. The day after, I get a shot to keep my white blood cell count high.
Every other week, I'll just get Herceptin.

That's one round of treatment, folks. I'll repeat 6 times, for a total of 18 weeks.

I should finish that part around the middle of January 2014.

Then, hopefully a lumpectomy, followed by radiation, and more Herceptin & tamoxifen to round out 1 full year.

I can expect to keep my hair for about 2 weeks after the first round of chemotherapy, so I'm wig shopping this weekend if anyone's interested in helping me find something suitable funky to wear for the next year...