Shifting Gears and Shrinking Tumors
As a marketer, I have a natural tendency to organize my entries in an organized and blog-style format, but this one is going to be a little more of a brain dump.
First things first, let's address the hairy situation... or lack thereof. Remember how I was celebrating my hair sticking around past the 14-day mark? Well, those celebrations were short-lived. As of two days ago, I’ve started losing my hair. Thankfully it’s not coming out in clumps (yet) but is more excessive shedding. I can’t run my hand through my hair or tuck my hair behind my ear without having a lot of strands in my hand. Thank goodness I preemptively chopped it off and snagged myself a fabulous cranial prosthesis (aka wig).
In other news, I made the bold move to switch surgeons last week. I am very happy with my surgeon, however, she presented a surgical option that I hadn’t even considered when this journey began… a lumpectomy. The thought of that makes me incredibly nervous about recurrence and I’m still leaning toward a mastectomy, but her explanation and reasoning has given me a lot to think about.
To help with that decision, I FINALLY heard back from UofM and will be heading there on Monday. It feels a bit pretentious, but they won’t provide me with a second opinion unless I do imaging on “their” machines. So even though I have already started treatment I guess we’ll be doing it again. Which is also terrifying because my left breast is still terribly bruised and full of large masses from the excessive bleeding from my biopsies. So the thought of putting my breast into a mammogram machine with those is cringeworthy.
On a brighter note, we've hit some milestones! I've officially completed 1/6th of my chemo journey and 1/3rd of my weekly treatments. But the real victory? The tumor that once felt like a marble is now down to pea-size! Additionally, my lymph node is also significantly smaller and is finally less painful. My oncologist gave me the thumbs up, saying I'm responding well to treatment, which bodes well for future surgical decisions and potential trial participation down the line.
As for side effects, fatigue decided to crash the party over the weekend, leaving me snoozing in broad daylight (a rare occurrence for me). Digestive issues have been... manageable, thanks to making senna a new addition to my pill routine. But hey, I'll take manageable over unbearable any day. All in all, it's been a week of wins, losses, and plenty of hair-raising moments. But hey, we're still kicking, and that's something to celebrate, right?