The joy of Oral chemo

Hi Amanda, congratulations on the good news, that is so great.

I too lost a short term friend to BC in January.  She had been free of it for 10+ years.  In August last year it came back only in small amounts and then in January she was hospitalised with lung problems and had 3 massive heart attacks and passed away.  She was 43 and left two sons.  When I was rushed in for the pleurodesis later in January, I thought that it was going to be my time.  Thankfully I came through but apparently only just.

I get exactly where you are coming from with your story.  Many of those thoughts have been mine too.  One of the ladies that I used to work with came into work one day very excited that her daughter was getting married.  It was all very romantic the way he proposed and it is going to be like the wedding of the century.  I was very excited for them as I have known her daughter for quite a number of years and felt so pleased for them.  I raced home after work to share the news with my girls.  When I opened the door, I shouted "Guess what" but then when I looked at my three daughters sitting there looking at me, I had to run from the room.  All I could think of was that this was something that ABC will probably deprive me of, my daughters weddings.  It took me about a month to be able to tell them the exciting news because everytime I started, I would think of their weddings.

I don't like to think I will give up but as you sayyou can get to a point where the question pops into your head, how much more of this can I do?

My oncologist is also encouraging like yours.  He has never given me a "time" he says we will wait and see how you react to the treatment as there are many people who live with ABC for a number of years.  I have always been grateful for his response.  Now I just annoy him with the question "Are there still options?" 

My last scans showed no new disease and he is thinking that maybe the medication (Xeloda) caused a spike in my marker so we wait again for about a month and see what the blood tests say.  When I look at the blood tests the only thing that ever seems to be up is the marker all the other things are normal.  Sometimes I find that frustrating.  But at least the results were better than we thought although they do think I cracked a rib from a cold I managed to catch after the pleurodesis operation.  Had a lot of coughing so they think that is what happened.

But you know what, we can prove all the statistics wrong.  I am one and I know there are many more out there.  I wasn't supposed to be here 12 months from diagnosis and then they thought three years was pushing it.  Here it is 6.5 years later and I am still here annoying my oncologist and anyone else I can find.  So even when we have bad days, if we can recognise that we are down then that is half the battle.  We just need to remember to pick ourselves up before it keeps us there.

I hope I haven't been to down on here but I think we all have our stories that someone else will recognise.

SO happy for you Amanda and I keep you in my thoughts.

Take care.

Tracey xx