I left you with a bit of a cliffhanger last time.
I spent 2 days talking to family, friends, and trusted advisors. I even contacted my former oncologist who got me through the lymphoma treatment. She was very reassuring and told me several times that I would be well. While most acknowledged the difficulty of the decision, the medical experts and trusted advisors agreed.
And, of course, there were tears.
I decided to have the chemotherapy.
This was not an easy decision. I had to separate the fear and dread from the science and reality.
The fear and dread…Chemotherapy is going to suck. I do not feel sick. I am going to receive a treatment that makes me feel sick, and weak, and exhausted for 3 months. I may end up weaker than I am now.
The reality is that I have triple-negative breast cancer, known for its aggressive growth (as seen by my own case where the tumor doubled in size in a month) and metastasizing so that any future tumors would likely be in multiple locations and much harder to treat with known worse outcomes. In addition, I have the BARD1 gene mutation known to contribute to triple-negative breast cancer.
While the math on the chemo vs. no chemo outcomes seems like a small difference, I had to consider my specific case. Do I really want to skip chemotherapy to avoid the suck I know it to be only to be back in a year or two facing much more difficult choices and treatments.
Now that the decision is made, it is time to go all in. There is no looking back or second-guessing. This is going to work, and I am going to live cancer-free after this. Positivity and optimism are highly correlated with good outcomes from chemotherapy. Cue PollyAnna.
So, what’s that plan?
I know more this time around. There are things you can control and there are things you cannot control. Focus on what you can control and look for ways to mitigate the things you cannot control.
I can use diet and exercise to mitigate some of the things I am afraid of like losing all the physical fitness progress I have made in the past 5 years.
In the interim I prepared. I got the pneumonia vaccine, talked to the pharmacist about my supplements to make sure I kept taking what I could, and discontinued anything that would interfere with the chemo. Turns out almost everything is approved, I am only stopping the antioxidants (omega-3, and CoQ10).
I talked to a dietician and a physical therapist and started physical therapy exercises.
I gathered all the things I want to take with me for the infusion which is scheduled to last 3 hours.
And I cut my hair. Post chemo my hair was just about waist length again. I got it cut into a bob. It is cute and it will make managing the hair loss a little easier when that happens.
Chemotherapy starts tomorrow. I am as ready as I am going to be.