Twelve Days After Radiation Therapy

Things are getting better and better each day.  I have new skin growing and a lot of the swelling has gone down.  I have another picture to share showing the progress.

I still have to bandage the skin with the topical antibiotic cream, Silvadene, for at least two more days to prevent any bacterial infections.

My spirits are higher and my energy level is increasing.  Normalcy is in sight!!

Status

When I saw my medical oncologist for my last routine visit, I asked what my status is considered now.  He said the best way to say it is that I HAD breast cancer.  He didn't want to use the word remission but now I'm not exactly sure why.  I looked up the definition and remission refers to periods of time when a person with a long-lasting illness does not have symptoms. During a remission, a person returns to his or her usual state of health.  I guess I would say that I am in remission.

Four Days After Radiation Therapy

I was very fortunate that during my radiation treatments it went very smoothly.  However, at my last treatment, my skin started to break open.  Over the weekend, my skin got worse and worse.  The black, dead skin is peeling and now there is raw, red exposed skin.  It has been very painful and hard to sleep at night.  I have a picture to share.  Hope it doesn't gross you out too much!

The white is the medicine called Silvadene.  The greenish stuff is my dead skin.  I saw the doctor today and it is progressing as expected.  He told me by the weekend, I should feel less pain and a new layer of skin should be forming.

I shared the photo so that others who may go through this can see what could potentially happen.  This is worse than I ever anticipated.  My doctor told me to take some Percocet for the pain and it has been helping.  Wish I would have taken it over the weekend since I already had some left over from my surgery.

Going to rest now.

Radiation Journey

This will be a very short summary of my radiation course of treatment.  It began January 30, 2013 with the planning appointment.  Films were taken to layout exactly where I was to be radiated.  Basically, trying to avoid my heart and lung.  Once that was determined, they marked me with little tattoo dots so that I would be lined up the same way each time I was under the machine.  I was nervous about the tattoos thinking it was going to be painful, but it wasn't at all.  It was just a little prick and their so small, that they blend in with my other freckles.

I had my first radiation treatment on February 4, 2013.  There are a total of 28 treatments with one a day Monday through Friday.  The first week was very uneventful.  I didn't notice anything different.  The second week went well, except when Friday rolled around, I couldn't stop yawning and I had to take a nap.  The third week was the first big snow storm that we had.  So I didn't have a treatment on Thursday or Friday, so one got tacked on to the end and the other I had to do on that Saturday.  There were a few of us that they wanted to continue treatment and not have a delay.  Again that Friday and actually the weekend, I was tired and slept as much as I could.

There was another snow storm in my fourth week and had to postpone one of my treatments to that Saturday as well.  The kids had a snow day from school, and had to come with me to my appointment.  To not bum then out, I told them we would go across the street to Stephens Lake Park so that they could go sledding afterward.  Most of my appointments took from 20 minutes to 30 minutes.  However, this day took an hour and the boys were so anxious to get out of there.  I felt bad for them, but they toughed it out and got to sled for about an hour.  I went down the hill once and that was enough for me.  Too bumpy! Like clockwork, that Friday I was fatigued again.  The kids didn't have school, so my awesome sister took them to the library so that I could take a nap.

I didn't have a lot of pain or discomfort with the burn until the fifth week.  In my armpit, there is a painful and swollen burn.  It turned black and the skin was peeling exposing pink, raw skin.  My skin is itchy where I have been radiated.  The total burn area is the shape of a square over the left side of my chest.  I wanted to take a picture to show you what it looks like, but I couldn't get a G-rated version and the picture just doesn't show how bad it is.  Fatigue was still a factor, but napping always helped.

I'm in my sixth week now.  Actually, I have just one more treatment left, tomorrow, March 14, 2013.  I am so ready for it to be over!  The burn is so bad that it is hard for me to sleep.  Just to change positions takes a lot of effort so that I don't stretch and tear the skin, which is quite painful.  The burn in my armpit is peeling more and hurts the most.  It's in a spot where there is skin to skin contact and friction, so peeling my skin and clothes off the burn is not helping the healing process.  I try not to move my arm too much so that I don't exasperate the wound.

People have asked if radiation is worse than chemo.  That is a hard question to give a straight and simple answer.  Each treatment has their goods and bads about them.  Which would I prefer...neither...but I would say chemo was probably the hardest because of the longer stent of side effects.  With radiation, I started feeling pain in the fifth week and I was told that it will probably take about two weeks for the pain and soreness to go away after the last treatment.  So that is four weeks of dealing with pain unlike chemo's ups and downs for 16 weeks.

Ultimately, I would take and have taken all the goods and bads; ups and downs to kick cancers ass!

Realization

I wrote this one on January 30th.

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I'm at this point that I am feeling better post-surgery.  My mind isn't constantly on pain or discomfort.  It is now focused on cancer.  I have been in survival mode since I was diagnosed so I really haven't processed the meaning of breast cancer.  What I know of it is what my doctors told me, but I never took the time or had the time to think it through.  I think that is why, in my mind, I haven't made it a big deal.  I was going to do whatever it took to aggressively fight the cancer and then be done with it.  When this is all over and years down the road, I would see this as a blip in my life.  I would move on like nothing ever happened.  This, my friends, is called DENIAL or NAIVE.  Maybe this was the coping mechanism I needed to make it through everything I have been through to this point.  Thinking beyond this time may have been too much for me to handle.

What I am getting at is that I have come to a realization that once I have completed radiation, that does not make me CURED.  There is no cure for breast cancer.  The chemotherapy, the double mastectomy, the radiation treatments, and the estrogen-blocking pill, Tamoxifen, are all aggressive measures to rid my body of the existing cancer and hope that it got any other cancer cells lingering around.  Only time will tell if I have a recurrence.

I'm learning my prognosis is always better as time goes on without a recurrence.  The first two years have a higher percentage for it coming back.  So my medical oncologist will see me two or three times each year in the next couple of years just to check in with me.  Five years is like a magic number...recurrence greatly diminishes at this milestone.

I'm not trying to be a downer about this, but realistic.  This is a disease that I have to manage and be aware.

I have done some reading and learned more about my disease.  I probably have had these cancer cells for 8-10 years but were not able to be detected until now.  During that time there was plenty of opportunity for the cancer cells to get out of the breast and spread to the rest of the my body.

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I didn't post this because I was still learning but also felt I was being too negative at the time.  I had just finished reading a book about four young women who where battling breast cancer.  Two of them died after it recurred a few years after their diagnosis.  Their cancer was caught early but still had a recurrence.  This scared me, and to be honest, it still weighs on my mind.  I'm sure as time goes on, those thoughts will lessen.

Apologies

I have been very irresponsible with my blog.  I have allowed you to be vested in my journey and then I disappear.  Please forgive me!  My blog is always on my mind and when something happens I think that would be great to post, but as time went on, it was too overwhelming for me to post something without catching everyone up.

Well, I've just got to do it.  It will take me some time but I will catch you up. I will do more posts with specific topics.  That way I feel I can share with you what I want to share without writing a book.  We will see how it goes.  :)

This past week, I have had several followers check up on me looking for an update.  Thank you for the nudge!