The girl in the bubble......:(

      Well, today is day three after the second  date with our little friend the RED DEVIL and I have been a little weaker in the legs but otherwise symptoms and reactions to the treatment is relatively the same. I do however believe there maybe a cumulative affect but not giving into that notion yet:) I am feeling like a 90 year old today after the Neulasta shot, it is hard on the muscles and joints as it ups the bone marrow. My pastor and his wife brought a wonderful pasta dinner over last night, Thank you so much Carol:) I love you guys.
    My blood counts have been low and I have had to refrain from going to the store or church etc, VERY DEPRESSING!!!! I have been told that my counts should come back up with the second phase of my treatments but I still have two more of the dense dose A/C before we switch. So, hoping I stabilize and don't have to remain inside through Thanksgiving:( If I am feeling up to it we are heading to the farm this weekend for youth season so my Dakota can kill his first deer, and maybe mom can snag one too:) Pictures to follow......

HAIR, here today....gone tomorrow?

        I would like to just say thank God this is a new chemo free week :)  I can say that, chemo, although you are ravishing red in color and may or may not be nick named RED DEVIL, you have not defeated ole' H. She has been in the ZONE since the diagnosis and continues to propel her self forward because looking back has no value in this situation. Why I am writing in third person? Anyway, this is day 6 of my first chemo cycle and although the initial shock to my system brought nausea and may or may not have taken away the desire to eat IN A TUB tacos for a while, it was relatively non eventful. I did not throw up, get the scoots, or lose any hair!!!!! WOW, why am I not losing hair? Is this an answer to prayer? Not sure but going with it for now. I haven't colored or cut it in months and pretty much look like the shaggy dog, in fact the wigs look soooo much better than my real hair now I wear them even though I haven't went bald. Plus, as Paris says they are HOT!!!
    I have had so much support and love from my family and church family. I am humbled by the words and the acts of kindness, Popeye's chicken from my dear friend Marilyn and all the fixin's she made at home, just after I mentioned that chicken sounded good. The way to this girls heart is through her stomach people, so in place of flowers and cards....chicken plz. LOL! I am totally KIDDING. Don't send me chicken:) I did have some muscle aches after my NEULASTA gold shot, I call it the gold shot because I could use $3500 worth of clothes and shoes rather than this bi-weekly shot. $3500 x 4....that is a lot of shoes and purses people, but it does boost my bone marrow and white and red count so I can continue to live a semi normal life, thus the boy in the bubble. So, to recap....nausea, muscle and joint pain, a little dizzy here and there and the infamous red urine incident (which is a result of the RED DEVIL) and little Heather heading to bed before midnight, chemo has disrupted my life very little. I have avoided crowds some and am missing my church family today. I am scheduled for a CBC in the morning and have a oncologist appointment tomorrow to see how I am doing after the first infusion.
    So, having said that I just want to thank my family and friends and my beautiful, wonderful daughter that graced me with her presence this entire weekend, for all the continued love and support and most of all thank you Jesus Christ for giving me the strength and the courage to face this disease always knowing that you are carrying me though.

Chemo Numero Uno and BOOBS, BOOBS, BOOBS !!!!!!

         Chemo.....well if this is it, which I hope it is, I have had very few side effects. Praise God!!! This is day two of the first of my chemo cycles. I will be getting 4 DD A/C and 12 Taxol treatments, for a grand total of 16. I am on my way with one super scary treatment down and 15 to go. I arrived at the hospital at 8:30, I got into the suite around 9:30 had our CBC run and vitals all taken. Everything was perfect.....time to get started. I was a little emotional and looked across the room at Brett and asked...."Are you still going to love me when I am bald?". Of course he said "yes baby" and comforted me, but what else could he say?  "No....I don't think so".
     I have been struggling with self image my whole life and given the bald, boob less version of myself I am "really" struggling.  I AM boobs and hair, I know how shallow I am, but that is what I felt like made me sexy and secure!!!! Well, I have to say that while I have many hang ups at the moment....it won't be like this for long, just like the song says. I am much more than boobs and hair, although I am on a desperate rescue mission to retrieve them, I will be okay until I do God willing:)

Sending you all my love

      Well, this journey has taken me through three surgeries and next stop is chemotherapy, I start it in less than 24 hours. I experienced GREAT fear when the words cancer were told to me, cancer is a very scary word. Although I was scared and unsure of why this was happening to me I began to cry out to God and ask him to help me. I have to say that once I "gave it" to him I have experienced great peace over this entire situation and every aspect of my life, not to say I haven't had a few episodes of anxiety but as fast as it came it would leave as I prayed it away. We cannot predict the future or control everything in our lives, we just think we can, until something like cancer comes knocking. When it does, as it did for me, you rally. That is just human nature, what else do you do? Refuse treatment? Lay down and die? That was not an option for me, I apparently have a lot to live for:) I don't want to say that cancer has been good for me, but cancer has forced me to rely on God and to learn that through him I can do all things. I am sooooo STRONG!!!!! I have never felt so empowered in my life, I know sounds crazy right? I am strong because I am weak, does that make any sense?
       I have been blessed to have some wonderful women in my life my beautiful daughter, my mother, grandmother, my step mother and now a huge network of women that I rely on for encouragement, prayer and support. I have been adopted by a lady at my church that have been at my surgeries all my highs and lows throughout this walk, I love you Marilyn:) My pastors wife whom is also a breast cancer survivor has been nurturing me and interceding for me. I have at least 5 churches which I am on the prayer list, family, friends, strangers ALL praying for me and I love them all. I can't tell you what that means to know on days that I am down or busy to know that while I was carrying on with my day someone was ringing up heaven for me:)  Thank you all :)
     I believe that God places people in our lives in due season and through this journey I have had a wonderful christan surgeon that prayed with me before each operation , he asked and I was stunned, but so thankful:) Thank you Dr. Lehr. Every time I have needed something whether it be encouragement, peace, strength I have had the perfect person on the other end of the phone, or coming by to visit or just bumping into them at the wig shop. Something about hearing a stranger say "You are gonna be fine, God's got this", is sooooo awesome:)

I am the face of breast cancer

      My breast cancer story began July 13, 2010 @ 1:30 in the afternoon. I was at my obgyn for my annual check up and had promised my self I would ask her to look at the "dent" I has in my left breast. I had noticed it right before Colt was to be born and thought it was just due to my milk coming in...boy was I wrong. At the appt brought the "dent" to my NP attention, she said I don't think it's anything and dismissed it even after she had done my breast exam. It must have not FELT like cancer. I pushed again before she left the room to look again with my arm raised because it looked different or worse when my arm was up. She again said "Well, there is a "dent" but I don't think it's anything, BUT we will send you for a mammogram just to be sure." WOW....was this happening to me?
    So, got to the imaging center same day, had the mammogram and then they took me to another room to have an ultrasound. I knew it was not good at that point. As the radiologist does the ultrasound he looks at me and says" You have a mass Heather, and I believe it is breast cancer". I was BLOWN away. No family history of breast cancer, in fact I met none of the criteria for having this dx. WOW...what next?
     Meet Dr. Lehr, surgeon...." Heather, you don't have family history, your young, I believe this is going to be nothing, but let's do the biopsy to be sure".......3 days later "Heather, it's Dr. Lehr......are you sitting down?" ....No, do I need to be? "Yes, you do have breast cancer".....yada yada yada....my world was spinning. Ductal Carcinoma, what is that? WOW...again...how can this be happening? I went to his office the next day with my mom, grams and Brett my "support" team. We discussed the cancer, what it meant and how to treat it? Would I live? Am I going to die? ....I wanted the cancer OUT- gone, I wanted him to take both of my breast that I would NEVER have to deal with this again. He said let's go slow, we can go forward but never back and if we do the double mastectomy you can't go backwards.
    So, I had a lumpectomy, margins clear, no node involvement, but it was invasive. The tumor was 3.2 cm, it was estrogen and progesterone driven or positive and it did not have the her protein that is present in aggressive forms of breast cancer. After the initial path report revealed no node involvement the final one said 2 positive nodes...wow that means CHEMO. Could this get any better? I may lose my boobs which I LOVE and now my hair!!!!! This cannot be happening!!!!! But it was,  I was then given the BRCA test to see if I am at a greater genetic risk for recurrence. If so, recommendations were to have a double mastectomy to reduce the risk. The BRCA test results came back MAYBE...wow...1 of 10 people in the WORLD to have this particular mutation, still trying to find out the significance of it. Still recommendations from 2 oncologists and my surgeon, double mastectomy to reduce risk, as each year it would climb 0.5% plus my 10 to 20% chance of recurrence just having been DX previously. So, decided to have the double mastectomy to ensure a better survival rate and less chance of recurrence. WOW is this hard!!!!!!
     I am a woman BECAUSE I have boobs...what does it mean if I don't have any?  Struggling but muddling through, all the while weaning our son in 3 days from the breast which was very difficult for me and I thought would be devastating to the little man cause he was a boob guy for sure, but he transitioned beautifully. Still everything else was haywire, I was trying to be strong, praying and believing that God would change this outcome and move for me to get me out of this nightmare.  Then it happened God stepped in at my weakest moment and took my hand and said, "This is your testimony and you will tell a lot of women your story". WOW, it is starting to make sense now,  I hadn't revealed this to Brett but God had told me that last fall and I knew the second time I heard it what it really meant. I was going to live and beat breast cancer so that I might share my story with others. I CAN do this, no matter what I am going to come through this.
    August 23, 2010 I had a bilateral mastectomy clear margins and one more positive node, that means Stage2 B. WOW....I had not asked any Dr at that point what stage as when you hear the word cancer you assume stage 4 and death, or at least I did. Fast forward to now, healed from surgery awaiting first chemo treatment October 11, 2010  to be finished in February 2011.
    I AM THE FACE OF BREAST CANCER. October is breast cancer awareness month, I want to urge all women to ask your doctor to test your for the BRACA gene and see what your risk is...even if you have no family history, if you test positive your chance of developing breast cancer before the age of 60 is 80- 85%. Please be proactive with your health and press and push your doctors to do more tests if your body is telling you something different. My tumor based on size and grade had been growing 5-7 years, that means I was 27 -29 years old when it began . I would NOT, based on the current policies and recommendations, had a mammogram until 40 and by then it could have been too late.