Even if sometimes I do not believe it. Everything will be OK.
Femara has stopped working. Cancer has not invaded my organs but a lymph node on my lungs next to my heart, my 11th rib & my t4 on my spine are no longer stable. They are showing small growth of cancer. My Ca 27.29 tumor markers also jumped 100 points in 6 weeks.
The positive is that Femara (the weakest form of treatment for a Stage 4 ER+ breast cancer lady) cleaned up some nodes and the pleural effusion surrounding my left lung. Bad news is it stopped working and the cancer cells are now boiling and bubbling in the lymph node and the spot on my spine & rib cage. This means I am done with Femara. I can never go back on it, unless another therapy is approved to pair with Femara in the future (kind of giving it super hero powers to make it work better).
Now, I move onto a new drug combination : Afinitor and Aromasin (another antihormonal). Afinitor is a targeted therapy/chemo that is taken orally, daily. It is an mTor Inhibitor which when paired with Aromosin, makes the antihormonal more effective. With this combo we hope that my cancer is fooled and allows the super charged AA combo kill what is left of my cancer and get those tumor markers down to normal. New medications means new potential side effects. I might be
complaining of the following: delayed wound healing, more susceptibility
to colds/flus, mouth sores, stomach issues, impaired appetite, weight
loss, breathing issues, and bone pain. Please do not come around me
if you are sick. I mean this. I love all my friends & family, but
the last thing I want is to be in the hospital or out of work due to an
infection or a cold.
This is my third line of antihormonal treatments, which could mean if this does not work, I go on standard chemo. That is if there are no studies or new drugs approved by the FDA. As of now, there is no available medication approved by the FDA. All of
these drugs are in clinical studies or are in the process of approval
from the FDA, which takes up to 10 months. Here is a link to some drugs coming out in the next year or two : Studies that can save me, so DONATE TO METAVIVOR!!!
In the meantime, I am going to inquire about getting a biopsy of the cancer on my spine to get the exact pathology of the new, mutated cancer. I want to see if I am eligible for other treatments. As 1yr ago, we only had enough fluid from the effusion to test for hormone receptors. I want to see if i am a candidate for HER2 treatments also. I was a borderline candidate 4yrs ago, so now studies show that those medications may work for me too.
Now this is not going to be easy, but I can do this. I swallowed my first dose today. I will keep moving on. I am going to get my butt back in the gym. Life moves on. No sense of being alive if you do not live the life worth living.
