If you read my earlier post, you know there were some options for how my chemo treatment might go based on new scans. Here is the update on what the breast ultrasound looked like, and the plan so far. I was…misinformed.
What’s up doc?
Well, somehow I got it totally wrong. I had been through 4 rounds of chemotherapy. They were giving me the drugs adriamycin and cyclophosphamide every 3 weeks. I thought the plan was to do scans, and if they looked good, go ahead and do surgery to remove the tumor meaning no more chemo. Wrong!
Turns out if the scans looked good, they might do the surgery then, but follow up with more chemo. But more likely they would go ahead and do more chemo and then scans. The oncologist informed me of this, then left the room so I could change into the gown and he could do his exam. He left the room, I changed, and then I started crying. I tried to stop before he came back in but failed, and had to explain I wasn’t prepared for both options to be more chemo.
When they left and I changed back, I tried to gather myself before going back into the treatment room. I managed to do so as far as the bathroom in the treatment room before I cried some more. Then I washed my face with cold water, dried it with those scratchy public bathroom towels, you know the ones. I figured fuck it, I wasn’t the only one to cry in a chemo treatment center, and headed back to my seat.
The scans
A week later I went back to get another breast ultrasound. This time my spouse went with me. I am so grateful for him, he can sense when I am anxious, and really knows how to lighten the mood.
I put the gown on, the technician turned on the scanner, and went quiet. She did this the first time I had a breast ultrasound done, and it was because it was bad news. So I started to freak a little bit. My spouse said, “well, at least it isn’t moving!” Referring to the countless baby ultrasounds we had been to at that point. The technician stayed straight face and confirmed that would be weird, I started laughing. I added, “can you tell the sex?” She said it was mean and called it the Grinch. I said, “hopefully it hasn’t grown 3 sizes that day.” She was in no mood.
But it hadn’t grown three sizes. In fact, it had shrunk! It was almost half the size it was before chemo! The lymph node that it had spread to looked almost normal! Woohoo! I think that means it is in remission? I’m not sure what remission means tbh.
The plan
The plan as it stands right now is to do 12 more weeks of chemo every week with a different drug starting this Wednesday, May 10th, and ending the last week of July, the 26th. My guess is they will still want to induce birth, because they will not want to wait 4 weeks to give birth, and then 2 weeks to recover. <sarcasm>Hey, did you know all pregnant people give birth at exactly 40 weeks and it only takes them 2 weeks to recover?</sarcasm> They are aware I really do not want to induce, and that if it is really necessary, that I would prefer to wait until 39 weeks instead of the 37 they are suggesting. Part of this will depend on how the tumor responds to the next chemo drugs.
After birth, they will do surgery. The Maternal Fetal Medicine specialist said it only 2 weeks to recover. I call BS. Especially because the oncologist said it would take too long to recover from surgery if we did it now, to get back to doing chemo, putting me at risk for the tumor growing again. So it will be interesting to try to figure out recovering from surgery and looking after a newborn as well.
After surgery they want to do immunotherapy in the form of a pill. This is something I told the nurse I would like to have a discussion about when we get there. One thing I would really like to do if I can is breastfeed, and doing chemo would mean the chemo drugs would get into the breastmilk, and I would not be able to do so. All in all, right now I am just going to worry about going to the treatment center every week, and I can cross the induction, post surgery chemo bridges when I come to them.