First Chemo

I wasn't prepared for it. Nothing I read, nothing they told me, nothing could prepare me for the terrifying process of a chemotherapy infusion. I brought my sister-in-law and husband for moral support, but it was not enough. The treatment room was full of people and there wasn't enough room for them to be close to me. They sat a few feet away trying to talk about other things and stay positive. I couldn't even hear them. When they went to get something to eat I cried. They were big silent tears that I couldn't contain despite my best efforts. Treatment took all day because they had to go slow the first time. Other than being physically and emotionally exhausted, I had no side-effects to the drugs. I wasn't prepared for that either.

The side-effects did come, only later. Some the next day, some the day after. Each day it seemed like there was something new. None of them good. After five days I was about 85% recovered, so I went back to work.

The Beginning

I originally noticed a painful change in my breast in 2003 and had a sonogram to examine it. I was told it was just a fibrosis and not life-threatening. The pain was normal, could potentially get worse, but eventually the problem would resolve itself in time. They sent me on my way with the advice that I get it checked again in a couple of years.

Life went on and even though I worried that the pain was getting worse, much worse, and the lump was getting larger, I kept telling myself I was overreacting. I should have gone in and had it checked again. When the pain became so unbearable that I had to wear a tight sports bra 23/7 to keep my breasts completely immobile I should have talked to a doctor. Instead, I waited two years...the biggest regret of my life.

When I finally got it checked my regular doctor told me she was pretty sure I had cancer, but I'd need it tested. This was right before Thanksgiving so I had to wait that long weekend before I could get scans. I had another sonogram because a mammogram was too painful. The radiologist was terrible. He came in the room and looked at the screen shaking his head and "hmming." I asked him if it was bad and he said, "Yep," and walked out of the room. I was alone, terrified, and near hysterics. I was ushered into a viewing room with all the pictures on the wall glowing ominously. The radiologist with his terrible "bed-side manner" gave me and my husband his opinion that the 4x6cm tumor in my left breast was definitely cancer.

I was only 26.

CT scans. MRIs. Biopsies. Surgery. All within about a week and a half. Things were moving so fast I didn't have time to stop and consider what was happening to me. The news went from bad to worse. The cancer was in the lymph nodes and had metathesized to my liver. The pictures showed dozens of tumors all over the surface of my liver. My oncologist, Dr. Lee, told me liver mets usually clumped together instead of spreading out like mine, and this was probably the reason why I wasn't in an incredible amount of pain. When cancer metathesizes, or spreads, to other organs it is considered Advanced Breast Cancer, or Stage 4, and is the last stage...the worst stage. There is no cure for Stage 4, and only a glimmer of hope of remission. As devastating as this news was, there was more to come. The biopsy of the tumor showed that the cancer was a specific type, Her2nu positive; an aggressive cancer that until recently was virtually untreatable.

I was 26 and I was dying.

At this point my only hope was a drug that was in the last phases of a drug trial that was designed specifically to find and eliminate Her2, Herceptin. In conjunction with a standard chemotherapies, Taxotere and Carboplatin, these were the only tools I had to battle this terrible disease.