Monday, August 19, 2013

Finished With Chemo!

I finished up 12 weekly treatments of chemo last week, finally!  I felt decent for the most part but the last few weeks started to wear me down.  I am feeling better today and hopefully that will just continue as time moves forward.

I just met with my surgeon who performed my lumpectomy this spring and I am scheduled for another small surgery the first week of September.  There was a small area of DCIS (cancer cells) found in the biopsy outside of the tumor margins from my spring surgery.  My surgeon still wants to remove this area even though it is most likely "gone" from chemo treatments.  In her experience, they still want the area removed and will biopsy it to determine if it is still active DCIS.   Makes sense to me so we are going ahead with the surgery.

A few weeks after surgery I will begin 6 weeks of Monday-Friday daily radiation.  My understanding is that radiation is fairly simple with little to no side effects.

Throughout this I will continue with a form of chemotherapy called Herceptin.  I have been receiving this for the past 12 weeks along with my other chemotherapy and will continue to receive the Herceptin every 3 weeks for 9 additional months. This type of chemo has little to no side effects, I hope this is the true!

In a nutshell, I am done with the tough chemo.  My hair is growing back slowly and I should start to feel more like myself over the next few weeks.

This has been a long summer and we are so thankful to friends and family who have been so helpful with our kids.

Enjoy the rest of your summer!
Kristi