SEVEN weeks have passed since my last chemo treatment!
My energy has come back slowly and I have worked up to walking over 3 miles nearly every morning to try and build back some strength. My hair- a lot of it gray!- has been growing back in nicely. I was surprised when my eyelashes and eyebrows fell out 5 weeks after chemo ended but have since found out that timing is pretty normal. (FYI, it turns out eyelashes really DO block a lot of dust and debris and protect your eyes.) I still have a lot of bloody noses and I'm having some serious heartburn that I didn't experience during chemo- all part of my body trying to right itself.
Over a month ago I started taking Tamoxifen to block estrogen receptors in my body. This is a drug I will likely be on for 10 years. True to form for me, the drug led to 5 ovarian cysts right off the bat. My organs seem to always be up to the challenge of keeping life exciting. I felt them (it's an extremely sore feeling) and went right in for a sonogram with my ob/gyn to measure their size and get an assessment. We decided that taking both ovaries out of the equation is the best course of action, so an oophorectomy (a short and sweet laparoscopic surgery that sounds like it was named by Willy Wonka) is coming up in two weeks. Recovery should be swift from that (aside from the small detail that I will be thrown into menopause at 36 years old, hah!) and things should stay on track with reconstruction.
I've been meeting with my plastic surgeon in Kansas City every week as we prepare for the second reconstruction surgery, yet to be scheduled but likely in June. I found a blog written by a woman that chose to have a prophylactic bilateral mastectomy due to her strong family history of breast cancer (more and more young women at high risk are choosing to do this and virtually eliminate their chances of getting breast cancer).
I think she does a thorough job of explaining the reconstruction process so I'll link to it here for anyone wishing to understand the process better: North Carolina Charm
It has been wonderful not being on chemo and only needing to visit the oncology office every 3 weeks for Herceptin infusions. Cysts and tissue expanders are more than a little uncomfortable, but they're not excruciating and day by day I'm closer to being done with both so thank goodness for that.
Hopefully I can update you one more time in the middle of the summer to say I'm practically done with it ALL!
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