Maybe May

This month has been a rough one. It started on a positive note. I thought that I would be finishing up the chemo regimen that I was on, would be in remission, go on maintenance chemo and have a great summer. But once again the cancer gods have there own idea. I underwent SRS radiation surgery to my brain again a few weeks ago, but it didnt work this time. I have also had very low blood counts which just landed me in the hospital for 4 days. I guess I feel lucky that my oncologist noticed something was going on. I had a severe headache and was vomiting constantly. At the hospital they discovered that the tumor that was zapped with radiation is getting bigger and causing my brain to swell. So now I get to have real brain surgery. YIPEEE!!! As soon as my bloodcounts recover from the chemo. Which will probaby be is a week or 2.
When will this ever end, I AM SOOOOO TIRED...

April and I am thankful..

I am not going to talk about cansir in this post. It gets enough of my time. I want to reflect on how blessed I am. I recently celebrated my 48th birthday. Wow!! I am 48, when did that happen? LOL!! I mean I still feel 25 only smarter and fatter. I have so many people that love me. I had so many birthday wishes that I can't hardly count them all. How cool is that?. My beautiful litte boy will be turning 5 in a couple of months. My husband is amazing and really puts up with some crap from my crazy arse. I hope he know how much I love him and that he is the rock of our family. The rest of my family is doing ok ,for once, healthy and happy.
  I was at church on Easter Sunday and the priest was talking about the resurection of Christ and how we are forgiven no matter what we do. Also about how we all have struggles and how we overcome the most difficult of circumstances. He delivered the message of Easter perfectly. I cannot remember a time when it meant so much to me.I felt like he was talking directly to me. My son sat perfectly still on my lap as if he understood every word.
When we were going through the adoption process to bring him home I used to get so frustrated at how long it was taking, but now I understand, we didn't adopt a child sooner because he wasn't born yet. God sent him to us. What an amazing gift!!!
But for now I have to go because Rocco has something really important to tell me.. LOL!!!! I AM SO BLESSED!!!
HAVE A BEAUTIFUL SPRING!!!!!

Farewell March..

I never thought in my situation that I would ever be wishing my months away, but March is one I am happy to see go. Let's see, it all started with the new scans. I was really hoping that my decreasing cansir markers also meant that I was really going into remission, but nooooo. I discovered that I still have a tumor on my liver, a very painful one in my shoulder and 1 in my brain again. So I am still on nasty chemo. it takes at least 2 weeks to recover from treatment. The drugs I am on now are called carboplatin, abraxane, xgeva, herceptin, and the day after I have these I get a shot of something called neulasta to boost my plateletts because my body is having a really hard time producing it's own. I don't think I have been this tired since the whole thing started. 2 weeks ago, I was feeling really dizzy, almost fell in the pool, found out that I only had about 1/3 of the red blood cells that I am supposed to have. I had my first blood transfusion. Wow, I felt so good after that it was amazing.Thank you so much to donors out there.
I am currently undergoing radiation treatments to my shoulder and will once again have SRS surgery to my brain in the next couple of weeks,possibly 5 days of it this time, I can hardly wait to see how I feel after that. That makes 3 times for the brain radiation. (((SCARY!!!)))
I am still working some and am so thankful for the time I can spend doing what I love. I am thankful for all of my time really, I am just soooo tired, tired of all of this.  I worry so much about the toll this disease is taking on my family. I don't think Rocco understands, but Ron worries so much.
 I freakin hate cansir, I wish it would go away and leave my family alone. Sometimes I feel like it is inevitable that things will slowly get worse, and then sometimes I still don't believe that I have this disease. Sometimes I think that if I don't think about it that it will go away. I think all of the time, not a moment goes by that am not trying to rationlize it away.
I lost another friend 2 weeks ago, Chris. she fought for 7 years, had brain mets just like me, treated with SRS just like me, 3 times just like me..finally they could no longer control it in her brain. WTF!!!!
this is making me nuts!!!!
I am having a new brain scan on Thursday, it is called a kuperman study, it is an mri that shows your brain in small slices.The purpose is to show the radiation oncologist excatly where to point the radiation. I am praying to the scan gods that I still only have 1 new one in there.
I seen  a nutritionist today, she is concerned that I am losing too much muscle, I am concerned too, but most days it is all I can do to get out of bed. So today I forced a workout and a swim. I must say I felt better after. Life for me is a fight, the fight for my life ,my family's life, this disease will eventually beat me, but for now, I am standing strong, fighting to exist.
I am praying for a brighter April....

Give me the beat boys and free my soul, I wanna get lost in your rock and roll and drift away...

Sometimes I wish I could get lost or just wake up from this reality that I am forced to face every day.
Lately, I find myself weary. I am noticing that I don't feel as strong as I did with the first rounds of chemo.
My numbers are coming down, but I am completely exhausted and nauseas most of the time. I have treatment every 3 weeks now with a booster treatment on the in between weeks, when my blood is strong enough to handle it. So far I haven't had to have any booster treatment because my bloodwork keeps coming back a mess. Currently, I am on Abraxane, herceptin, carboplatin ( I call it barfoplatin, because that is how I feel for about 5 days after treatment.) and xgeva. They are working for now. I have finally accepted the fact that this stuff is not going to go away, I will have times when it is in remission, but the nature of it, it always comes back. I am not being pessimistic, I am just being realistic. I know miracles happen every day and still hope that there is one for me, but I need a plan just in case that don't happen.
I am now completely bald again and I think I have about 4 eyebrows left. I bought myself a pretty cute wig, but I hate the way it feels, I wear it sometimes when it is easier than trying to explain cansir to people.
Next week I am going to start putting scrapbooks together for Rocco.I have tried to do this on numerous occasions, but find myself paralyzed to think that this is how he will remember me. When this first started I used to think that I would live forever . I used to think that somehow God made a mistake, how could this happen to me, I just adopted a baby, I have a business, a husband, I have a life.. but cansir don't care and neither do the bastards that have poisoned our world. I was at lunch today and met a young girl 24 years old who has been battling lymphoma for about 5 years, she has been to hell and back. But just like me she has to go on. I pray that God blesses her sweet young life and that she can will have time to achieve her dreams.
 Every headache I get, Iwonder if it is a new tumor in my brain, every time I cough, I worry that I have a new tumor in my lung.  it never ends..THIS IS TURNING ME INTO A CRAZY or should I say ( CRAZIER PERSON)) LOL!!! I have new scans coming up in March, I will let you know how it goes.
Today, I found ou that I may possibly be back in remmission, my ca-15 blood test came back at 20, WOOOO HOOOOO!!!! I have all of my scans sceduled to restage, my cansir coming up in the next 2 weeks. My oncologist is confident that I am once again going into remission. (( PRAISE GOD for that ))). She also said that my body is pretty beat up from the chemo, so we are going to try to take a chemo break after my scans. I am sooo looking forward to this. So for now I am at peace, completely exhausted, but so happy for the sweet time I have been given..I pray for the strength to glorify him in some way. God is good all of the time, sometimes I don't think I understand his plan, but I have total confidence that he knows exactlty what he is doimg. I hope he forgives me for ever doubting his power..
Have a blessed weekend, I already have..

Platelets, hemoglobin and walking 5 miles a day...

The past couple of weeks I have been walking 5 miles a day, for 5 days of the week with my friend Ally. It really makes me feel great. However at the same time, my bloodwork is coming back crazy. For the last 2 weeks I haven't been able to have chemo because of low blood platelets and hemoglobin. Platelets are produced in the bone marrow and control blood clotting, while hemoglobin and white blood cells fight infection. The thing that is so strange is that I feel great, you would think that I would be tired or something.
Anyway so I am back on massive greens and grains in hopes that it will start to straighten things out .Today I had to get a lovely neulasta shot,( which makes me feel like hell by the way ) to boost them back up.
Hopefully everything will be back in order by Tuesday so I can get my massive dosage of poison. Anyway, just a short post  to keep track of how I am.  Stay cool!!

Peace!!!

Happy New Year 2012

Dec 27th was my 2 year cansirversary. Hard to believe really. I am still fighting, but am very thankful to have had the first 2 years pretty easy. I started on new chemo the day before Thanksgiving that didn't work so am now on 2 new drugs and had 2 rounds of radiosurgery to my brain since then. I am doing ok though . I could make this post about how crappy I feel, but I am not going to. I am going to focus on the positive things in my life.
I had an amazing Christmas, the people that I spent it with gave me renewed hope. I am so loved. My family is amazing. My son is always so happy , I can be feeling so bad and then he will say something that has me hysterical and I completey  forget for a moment what I was miserable about in the first place. he is growing up so fast and what a remarkable human being he is becoming.
I intend to fight harder than ever this year for my health, my life and happiness, too many people love me and I cannot bear to think how badly they will be hurt if I don't get better.
This morning, I made myself take a long walk, tommorrow, I will do the same.It is crazy how much better this makes me feel. I have also started my green juice regimen again, it was tough to drink them for a few days, but I can tell a difference when I don't.
So screw you cansir!! I will not let you win..
Happy New Year to All, may this be the best year of your lives. I intend to make it mine.

Sending Love and Light!!!

Let the Games begin!!

In a couple of hours I will once again be undergoing a procedure called stereotactic radiosurgery. It is basically very precise radiation to my brain to kill the nasty little cancer lesions that want to live there. This time I have 9 new ones taking up residence on my cerebellum. Don't panic though, the procedure is really not that bad and I have the best radiation oncologist on the planet looking after me. The hardest part about is they have to put my face in a very tight mask and bolt it to the table. If you know me, I am usually a kind of hyper person , so having to be still for any length of time is a challenge for me. I also get to have this procedure 2 times this week because of the amount of lesions that I have. YIPEE!!!!
Hopefully this will wipe them out.
On the chemo front, I started back on taxol the day before Thanksgiving, but found out last Friday that it is not working. My cancer markers keep going up, which is not really what I wanted to hear, but just the same I have to deal with it.  So I started on a new med called Abraxane, which seems to be a little easier, I had it on Friday and other than a little fatigue, I have a pretty normal weekend.
I have been noticing the past couple of days that my hair hurts.. LOL!!! Really, it hurts, it feels like someone is pulling it, I know from experience that it is getting ready to depart. I think I am going to wait this time for the GI Jane look, in hopes that it will hang around until after Christmas. We are planning a trip to Boston and it is soo cold up there, I can't imagine what it will feel like bald.
I have been very angry about this progression and have realized that it is not fair for me to walk around giving everyone a hard time because I feel sorry for myself, I have even stopped going to church, because, I was feeling angry with God,. OMG, am I crazy, I know that he is the only being that can truly save me. I won't even try to figure out his plan, because whatever the outcome, it is the way it is supposed to be.
It seems like every time, I get really low, he shows me something to prove that my situation could be a lot worse. I was walking into Twin Lakes imaging last week for my umpteenth MRI and the minute I walked in the door I almost ran into a woman that doesn't have any legs. I felt like he slapped me in the head.At least I can walk.
 I am very blessed in my life, every morning I wake up to my wonderful husband who has really taken some crap from me since this whole thing started, but he is still here. My beautiful little boy, who is the light of our family and a very loyal old dog, who is 10 years old today. My life isn't perfect, but it is ok, we will get through this and I am anxiously awaiting the day that I can say the word REMISSION once again. Oh and I almost forgot, I  really can't wait to have beer and brownies again!!!