B Cup Begone! -- Andrea's Story

Well it is probably about time for another post and another update on how Andrea is doing.  It's been several weeks since she started chemo and she has finished her first round of medicines.  She is now in her second round of medicines and is doing very well.  This new medicine is called Taxol and is derived from the Pacific Yew tree.  This round is supposed to be easier on the body than the first group of medicines.  So far Andrea has had two treatments.  She will have one treatment per week for 12 weeks with this medicine so she has ten treatments left.  She should be done with chemo just before Thanksgiving. As Andrea has gotten more and more comfortable with how she feels on chemo she has gotten back into a lot of her normal routines.  She has started playing tennis again, she's working like usual, and she even went on a business trip.  One thing that has been unexpected is that she has decided that going bald is easier than wearing wi...

The second dose of chemo is in the books and Andrea is doing great!  It was bit of a hard week as hair started falling out at an unbelievably rapid pace.  There were a few tears but Andrea is a real trooper, and with her new military-style hairdo, she is beginning to look like it.  She really is a strong woman and I have a hard time putting into words how impressive her attitude has been as she has approached this whole experience with cancer.  She's a superwoman.   I feel like we are at a point in the treatment that not a lot changes from day to day.  It's like driving toward a distant mountain, knowing with each minute that passes you are getting closer, but every time you look up all you see is a mountain in the distance.  After talking with Andrea, we decided it would be okay to move to a new phase of our blog and instead of a weekly update, only post when we actually have something interesting to tell--no need for a weekly hair and make-up...

Why wait for chemo to take your hair when you can do it yourself and have some fun!  This week's big news was Andrea's new hair--short and spiked into a mohawk.  She went with Josie and had some fun trying on the new do.  If you haven't had a chance to check it out on her Facebook page, you can find the picture she posted there. We spent some time this week on vacation to the Grand Canyon, which is a special place for Andrea.  She was supposed to hike from rim to rim with her friends this year while I was going to be the driver to pick them up at the South Rim when they were done.  Cancer changed those plans and Andrea wasn't able to do the hike, but her friends carried her across in spirit with t-shirts that said "Cancer Can Take a Hike. We Hike For Andrea."  It was cool to see them rally around her even though she wasn't able to go. Tomorrow is round two for chemo.  After that, she'll be halfway done with the red devil.

As the guy who doesn't have cancer, walking into chemo treatments with Andrea is a little like watching a wildfire burn with my chin on a shovel while all the firefighters around me are doing their best to contain the flames.  On Monday we spent five hours meeting with our doctor, getting Andrea set up for her for first treatment, and then finally dripping a bunch of chemicals into her port.  It was a surprise to me just how long it takes for people to receive their treatments.  As the nurse showed us around the treatment center during our chemo class a few weeks ago, it seemed like we were the new kids in a strange school and now I know why.  Spending hours every week, or for some everyday, sitting in a chair with a tube dripping into you, you start to get to know the people around you.  We met a couple of funny ladies, a really nice guy that told us the best place to get food, and an old guy that worked the room from the second he came in to the minute he left...

The 4th of July in Andrea's hometown is celebrated intensely with an explosion of amateur pyrotechnics in honor of the birth of our nation.  It is a time of homecoming and family traditions, the kind you might find on a Norman Rockwell.  It was a fantastic week to get together with loved ones and to see Andrea in the most normal setting she's been in for a while.  I'm sure in a lot of ways it was just a calm before a storm as Andrea begins chemo tomorrow.  There is a lot more information available about chemo on Google than what you'll find from me, but after all the time we've spent talking with our doctors, here's what we are expecting on Monday.  The chemo that Andrea will receive affects the fast growing cells in the body and their ability to replicate.  Because Andrea has such an aggressive cancer, the chemo can be very effective in targeting those fast growing cells.  Her first course of chemo will be a dose of adriamycin-cyclophosphamide every...

Andrea had her port installed on Tuesday this past week so we were at the hospital for an operation once again.  This one was much shorter, but I'm a pro now at the whole sit and wait game.  After getting Andrea all prepped up and covered in her favorite warm blankets, the doctors started to come in to do their pre-surgery checks and explanations.  Come to find out, the nurse anesthetist who was going to care for Andrea was a man I grew up with.  It was an awesome comfort to know that she was going to be in such good hands.  The surgery went well and since it was far less invasive than her past operation, we were able to head home soon after she came back to the recovery room. This week was also full of different tests and scans.  We ran into our first hiccup with the insurance company as they would not approve one of the tests the oncologist ordered.  Andrea called the doctor's office and he said that it will now go into a process where he has to ca...

As a football fan I've heard all my life that it is a game of inches.  An inch gained here, an inch lost there can be the difference between wining and losing.  Cancer must be a game of millimeters then and we're hoping this week we got information that will find us on the winning side of the line.  Since the surgery last week we have been waiting for the pathology to get back and on Wednesday we finally found out some more about the tumor that was removed and the tissue surrounding it.  The big news that we've been waiting on has been whether or not the cancer had spread to the lymph nodes.  According to the pathology report there were no cancer cells present in the lymph nodes.  We were also anxious to find out about the margins, the distance between the cancer cells and the edge of the tissue sample, and found out that the closest margin was 1 mm between the breast tissue and where it was taken off the muscle wall.  The overall tumor was 3.5 x 3.0...

The sun was just peeking over the mountains Wednesday morning when Andrea and I arrived at the hospital.  It was a cool morning with a calmness that belied the nerves I was feeling.  Andrea was ready to move forward.  With her quiet confidence and strength, we walked through the doors into what would be one of the longest days of my life.  If you have never been the one waiting around to hear how a surgery has gone, let me tell you it is a nerve wracking experience.  Lucky for me, my father-in-law arrived to keep me company just as Andrea rolled down the hall into the operating room.  Four hours later the doctor came into our room to let us know that the surgery had gone as well as it could have.  There were some good signs for us that day.  For one, the lymph nodes were not the worst the doctor had ever seen.  Cancer is hard, and when it has spread to the lymph nodes they are usually enlarged.  Andrea's were small and soft, so if the ...

Andrea is out of surgery and everything went as well as it could.  The doctor said that the lymph nodes looked pretty good compared to what he has seen in the past.  We are hopeful that they were able to get all of the cancer but we will not know until we get the pathology reports back in a few days.  She is resting and there is a good chance she will be able to go home tonight.  Thank you everyone for your kind thoughts and prayers. It really is amazing how much support we have felt these past couple of weeks. 

We got the confirmation that Andrea's surgery will be Wednesday.  I will post something after to let everyone know how it went.  In our consultation with the surgeon he went over the surgery and some of the things that will happen after.  We won't know a lot more until the pathology on the lymph nodes comes back but at least the cancer will be out of where we know it is.  Thanks for the prayers.

It's only going to be a short post this week since we're still waiting to find out when Andrea will go in for surgery.  She was able to meet with the geneticist on Monday and those tests were run, but we haven't found out the results yet.  They told Andrea that it usually takes five to twelve days to get the results, so for now we just wait.  We are still expecting to find out soon what she will have removed and when it will happen. During the wait time, it has been interesting to find out more about breast cancer and the support community that surrounds it.  Andrea met with a nurse navigator that gave her a lot of great information and the radiologist technician that performed her mammogram gave her a binder full of resources.  We found out there is a store that caters to the specialty clothing needs of women who have had breast cancer, like swimsuits with pockets for prostheses, and were introduced to "knitted knockers."  We were given a gas card to he...

It has been a wild ride the past few days, and there have been a lot of people to tell about Andrea's diagnosis.  Some friends who went through this several years ago said that it was a big help to have a blog to keep people informed on how things were going instead of trying to text everyone individually.  Frankly, I had no idea how hard it would be to try to tell everyone we are close to about what we're going through.  Everyone is concerned and everyone wants to know how they can help.  We are overwhelmed by the outpouring of love and support.  True to what we were told, it is too difficult to tell everyone everything we'd like.  You know I'm not a social media guy, and since Andrea appointed me the spokesman, I'm going with a blog.  We wanted a title that was us, and so starts the B Cup Begone! blog.  This is Andrea's story for the next little while.  This is a story I never wanted to write, but since it needs to be told, I'll do my best...