Started my new regime yesterday (took 5 hours), but will shorten from here on. I will try and spell it right this time:
Paclitaxal (weekly) and Trastuzumab (three weekly – which is the targeted drug Hercepton I keep banging on about) to block the Protein HER2 that caused the cells to become mutant rogue cancer cells.
This regime will follow me through to Christmas Eve. And then after that only three week (by intravenous) Herception until about October next year, 2019.
As expected and and advised, I feel pretty good today. A bit tired because I have 8mg of steroid every week, which keeps me awake, but that is only once a week before treatment and may get reduced over time if I tolerate the chemo well. Hemoglobin was 95 and as long as I have no extreme symptoms and it doesn’t go below 90 I should avoid any blood transfusions.
I see my “restack” surgeon next Tuesday, where I will be discussing those awesome tits I’ll be getting and see my “crack it” surgeon on 5th December where I will be convincing her to do my double mastectomy at the same time on the 8th of Feb.
After recovery from surgery in Feb I will do daily radiotherapy for a month or so and then start my oral hormone blockers (daily for the next 10 years). This still blows me away that I couldn’t have kids with all these hormones!! But who’d want one of their own when you could have FOS.
Feeling grateful the worst is over. Happy days from here on xx
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Published by Debra Mesecke
I was 21 and I was planning a wedding, buying a house and had a job interview for the job of my dreams on my 22nd birthday. You see I was being made redundant and had to find a new job by August. Especially with the new mortgage now. It was April. I worked for CML and my new job was a done deal. All I needed was a medical. And with that, just like that....my life was turned upside down and I was diagnosed with CML, ha ha, I know the irony. My hematologist had a laugh at that too. I had Chronic Myeloid Leukeamia, which was normally reserved for 70 year old men. Quite rare for a young adult to get, so how would they treat it? I underwent two separate trials until finally it was decided my best chance of survival (all be it only 50% chance), would be a MUD BMT (matched unrelated bone marrow transplant), now known as VUD Allograt (volunteer unrelated donor). I was told 21 years ago the chance of finding a match was 1 in 20,000 (and that is everyone was on the bone marrow donor registry). Scary odds. So being the risk taker I am I said "go for it". They found a match and that was my first miracle in this journey. The second miracle was, it worked - new blood type, two different DNA profiles and the miracle of medicine was reborn inside me. The third miracle is my son.
25 years on, I now face a new challenge. Breast Cancer. Certainly not the first person to have cancer, to have invasive ductile cancer, hormone receptive and HER2 +, or to even have a dual diagnosis. But this is not another Webiste about a cancer survivor, this is just my excuse to finally publicly write. Along the way I am hoping I can share some insights I have learnt over the years and at the same time, give you a good belly laugh.
View all posts by Debra Mesecke
Healthy, Happy & Whole 