Rosanna's Metastatic Breast Cancer Journey

Before today's treatment, I had lab work done and met with a doctor (not Dr. Sinclair as she was covering at another hospital this week).  My lab work looked better than it has in a long time.  I am no longer anemic and my liver counts were all in the normal range.  At an appointment about a month ago, Dr. Sinclair commented that it is very rare to see anemia improve during chemo treatment.  So thankful for this blessing!  I think the extra week and a half off from chemo helped my body process everything, which in turn helped bring down my liver count that had been slightly high. I read a copy of the PET scan report, and while a lot of it goes over my head, I can get the gist of it.  Seeing words like "decreased", "resolved", "no suspicious", and "resolution" are all words that you want to read on a PET scan. The treatment went well.  Apparently allergic reactions are somewhat common with Taxol, so I had to take stronger IV steroids befor

On Monday I received good news.  My latest PET scan showed that the Red Sunshine worked as well as we had hoped.  There is still cancer in me, though, and I will need more chemotherapy to continue to kill it.  Unfortunately there is a lifetime limit to how much Red Sunshine I can have because of how it can impact my heart function even years after treatment.  I have reached that limit.  So now we move on to the next phase of treatment, which I found out will be another form of chemo called Taxol.  Taxol will be given two weeks on, one week off.  My first treatment will be this Friday (August 23).  The hope is that I will have 12 doses of Taxol before scans will be repeated, but they may be repeated sooner if there is any question about the effectiveness of the treatment.  I will do Taxol infusions until my scans are clear and we can talk surgery or until my body stops responding to it. Transitions are scary.  I know the cancer responded to the first kind of chemo.  I know that my bod

Waiting has never been my strong suit.  When I want something, I go after it.  I typically feel anxious as the waiting time increases.  Here I am, though, almost four months into my cancer journey, and I'm waiting to hear what the next course of treatment will be.  Do I need to know right this minute? No.  Whatever the doctors decide will be exactly what is supposed to happen.  It really doesn't change anything dramatic.  Either way, I will be receiving treatments that will have side effects.  In some ways, maybe not knowing is better because I can't drive myself crazy researching and reading everything there is to know about the treatment.  I proved during AC (my red sunshine) that the side effects they tell you that you will experience don't always happen.  So maybe I am better off letting this all remain a mystery until it's time to start the treatment.  I have found that a certain amount of ignorance is bliss in this cancer world. So while I sit here and wait,