No more chemo!

Hello all,
Well, the weekend went by OK. Two highlights: having Doug around and having no GI Tract issues. You have no idea how much the second part means to me although of course, Dougie does too! I felt the usual crappiness though... very tired and even a little more nauseous than usual. Ick. My back pain was on and off. When I went to bed Friday night, my back was doing so well that I thought, maybe it's gone and my back is back to normal. Crazy talk! As I turned over in the middle of the night, I must have twisted something and major pain came back. I took Advil but it was so bad I had a hard time getting back to sleep a few times during the night. I feel like my back belongs to some old, fragile person who can't afford to move quickly or they might throw out their back. I move very slowly for fear of pain or creating some misalignment.

Speaking of my back, I went for my MRI today. It was an epic MRI session... I must have been in that machine for over an hour. Luckily it wasn't as bad as I remembered it the first time. Or perhaps it was because I asked the technician to crank the headphones up to the max volume so I wouldn't hear the horridly loud fire alarm-sounding tones coming from the machine. I guess I get the results in 2 days or so. I'm dying to hear about my back. My echocardiogram was on Monday and that was pretty unexciting.

Had dinner with some support group gal pals last night and it's so great to see them as they are ahead of me in terms of treatment and I can look to them to get an idea of where I'll be in a few months. OK, well, maybe not exactly. They were both growing hair by now... and I'm not but well, that's life. It will come back sooner or later.

I got my results from the genetic testing today as well. I have no gene mutations predicting a higher chance of breast cancer. So basically it means that I just got breast cancer randomly, it wasn't heredity or because of my Ashkenazi Jewish descent.... just bad luck. I won't be playing the lottery anytime soon ;-)

I am still struggling with the one or two sided mastectomy decision. And today's recommendations by the USPSTF don't help my decision much either. Less screening for everyone.

Thanks for the ongoing support. I still very much appreciate it.

That's all for now.
Mo