Rosanna's Metastatic Breast Cancer Journey

I'm not going to lie... it has been a rough week.  Owen came down with a cold and high fever last weekend and missed two days of school last week.  Then on Tuesday I began to feel rundown and the cold symptoms slowly progressed.  Thankfully when I went for chemo on Friday, my white blood cell count was up.  The nurse said that this was a great sign that my body was working to fight the cold off.  My chemo session went well and I even felt a little better immediately following the treatment.  Then Saturday morning came, and I felt horrible.  I had a temperature of 99.4 most of the day.  For most people this would not be a big deal.  However, when you are on chemotherapy, they do not want you to pop a couple of Tylenol to get the fever to go down.  Instead, they want you to monitor your temperature all day and track what it's doing.  I laid low all day, but the temperature kept rising.  By evening it got up to 100.3.  When i...

I had an appointment with my oncologist in Brewer yesterday to receive the results of my MRI.  I was fully expecting to hear news of improvement, but the level of improvement was far beyond what I dared to hope for.  The MRI showed a 95% resolution of the cancer in my breasts.  The left side shows no malignancies and the right side shows a less than 1 cm spot of malignancy.  This is amazing, miraculous, such a relief.  God is good!  Dr. Sinclair is going to contact Dr. Overmoyer in Boston with results and to see if she wants to see me sooner than we had originally thought. With news like that, Taxol treatment #3 was a breeze.  It was my first chemo dose with no steroid given.  This was also very exciting to me because I hate the way the steroids make me feel.  Thankfully I had no reactions during the chemo.  In the evening I did have a little bit of nausea so I did take an anti-nausea medicine so that I could get some sleep. It worked ...

In the summer of 2018, I was offered my dream job, working as a Title 1 teacher.  When I received my Stage 4 inflammatory breast cancer diagnosis in April, one of the hardest things for me was taking a leave of absence from my job.  I love my job.  I love the students and families that I work with.  I love my co-workers.  Knowing that I had to leave my dream position behind was HARD, but I knew I had to do it.  My school administrators, co-workers, students, and families were amazingly supportive.  They hosted a car wash benefit for my family and me that still makes me cry when I think about how much love I felt during those early days of my diagnosis. This week I returned to my dream job, starting year 14 of teaching!  I will be working four days per week, five days the weeks that I don't have treatment as long as I am feeling well.  My school continues to support me and help me work through this difficult diagnosis.  Later this winte...

For those of you that follow my journey on Facebook, you likely had the opportunity to read my post last night.  I feel that this is an important message and I want anyone that follows my journey to hear this message: If I could go back in time... One year ago today I found a lump in my breast. I googled what I should do and read that it isn't uncommon and to wait a month before going to the doctor. Perfect, I thought. I had an appointment scheduled for the end of September anyway. That appointment came, I shared with my doctor what was going on, she felt it and said she thought it was fibrocystic breast tissue and that it is very common. She offered a mammogram. Based on my age (33 at the time) and no family history of breast cancer, I declined, agreed it was probably no big deal, and didn't think much of it. Ladies... If your doctor offers you a mammogram, take it. I naively declined a test that could have prevented a stage 4 cancer diagnosis.  Tomorrow is September 1st....