Sorry, I have been a little wrapped up in NOT being a professional patient. On Tuesday, my doctor called & my bone scan was clear. All my scans look good & before I met with my doctor on Wednesday all I was looking at was a pleural effusion & two rouge nodes.
At this point, I was still very confused as to how my cancer just appears in fluid with no tumor. I should be greatful that I caught this early, but it felt strange. This is how it happened. My tumor was fueled by estrogen, which we assumed was birth control & environmental toxins. It was removed November 2010. Apparently all tumors like to spore cells to create more tumors, tumors do not like to live alone, they spore like fungi and like to create colonies. My tumor was resistant to chemo - a little cell (spore) lived despite getting blasted with Red Death (Epirubicin) & Agent Orange (Cytoxan). This little spore withstood 12 weeks of taxing Taxol that stole my eyebrows, but did not kill this cell. This cell lived on dormant until my ovaries (which apparently hate me) decided to turn back on 6 months after chemo. My ovaries are apparently super human & pump out more estrogen than I can even imagine. My ovaries fed this little cell estrogen & it decided it would travel to my chest wall and hang out in between my chest wall & lung. Slowly my cancer grew, slowly it created inflammation and fluid. The nodes are not cancerous in the scan, but are a reaction to the fluid.
There you go folks this little spore joined up with my ovaries in an attempt to try to beat me down. I have a plan & too bad I will kill you both.
On Wednesday my oncologist told me my first line of defense for a Stage IV reoccurrance is with anti-hormonal therapy. Tamoxifen did not work for me, well it helped me be grumpy and bloated, but it did not do anything for not feeding estrogen to my cancer. Now, we shut off my ovaries. I was given a shot of Lupron & will start Femara (my new anti-hormonal) in 27days. Lets hope this works to starve out the cancer. I see my oncologist for follow-up on Sept 4th. I have to get my tumor markers measured every month & a CT Scan of my chest every 3mo. Tomorrow (my 29th birthday) I will get my baseline tumor markers.
In the meantime, I had to call my ObGyn Oncologist to consult about removing my ovaries and forcing me into menopause at 29. I see him on August 27. I also had to schedule a second opinion consult with Dr. Linda Valdhat at Cornell, whom specializes in metastatic breast cancer. She is also doing a promising study with Stage IV Breast Cancer patients whom are No Evidence of Disease, which has been very promising. This study controls and monitors the copper in our bodies. After hearing that one woman is 4yrs with no disease and another is 6yrs, I really want to see this doctor.
I would like to have no signs of cancer again & if I have to be a professional patient again, I will.
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