New Day by Alicia Keys

New Day by Alicia Keys   I do not own the rights to this music.

I picked this title for the content, not necessarily the song. But you can rarely go wrong with Alicia Keys :)

New chemo, new day.  Here's the skinney:

The new common name of the chemo is Trodelvy. The most common side effects are:

    Diarrhea or loose stools

    Nausea or vomiting

    Anorexia or Appetite Losess

    Constipation

    Alaopecia or Hair Loss

   Low White Blood Cell Count

TRODELVY® (sacituzumab govitecan-hziy) is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with triple-negative breast cancer (negative for estrogen and progesterone hormone receptors and HER2) that has spread to other parts of the body (metastatic) or cannot be removed by surgery, and who have received two or more prior treatments, including at least one treatment for metastatic disease.

My first treatment was a brutal day. I had to be there by 9:30 to get checked in, then off for labs. That was the first hiccup. My port had not been accessed in months so it took a blood clot remover to draw blood from it. That took about 40 minutes. Then wait on lab results (another 40 minutes), then the pharmacy (another 20 minutes or so), then we start the 3-hour infusion, only after they inject me with 5 pre-chemo meds to help with tolerance.  Bottom line, I wasn't out of there until about 3:30.  Ugh! The bad thing was halfway through the infusion, I started to feel nauseas. I fought through it and didn't get sick but I will ask if they can up the short term anti-nausea premeds next week.

I was exhausted and fought nausea on and off all night. Some of it was chemo related but most was excess mucus related. Damn cancer!!

However, I continue to gain stamina and strength every day. I no longer spend most of the day napping. Yay! Hope the chemo works!!

Keep prayers coming!

 

 

    

Bad Moon Rising

Bad Moon Rising by Creedence Clearwater Revival 

I know it's been a while ...  a long while ... since I updated my blog. It's been a rough couple of months. My apologies for not updating sooner but I kept waiting for answers.

After my last post, my tumor markers started rising again at alarming rates. We began to work on moving up my January PET. That effort got side-tracked.

On December 6, my birthday, I was heading home from my MRI appointment (results we relatively good but we saw three small spots that my DR feels is probably scar tissue from the previous radiation). I started getting dizzy and feeling nauseous. Half-way home I started violently vomiting, got disoriented, increasingly dizzy. It took me an hour to get home from there, which should have been a 15- minute ride. I've haven't driven since then.

A couple of days later, I was so dizzy I couldn't walk nor put two words together. It was one of the scariest moments of my life, with the exception of driving around my neighborhood for an hour and not recognizing anything. Michael took me to the hospital. Turns out the problem was my kidneys.

My turns out my kidneys were not emptying into my bladder and everything was backing up. Gross! This was pushing me to renal failure. I had two procedures to put stents into my urethra (first one failed - said the bladder looked like a bomb had gone off, so they did a biopsy). It turns out my bladder is full of MBC. What are the odds? 2%. There I am .... an overachiever. I went home from the hospital after 8 days with two tubes, one in each kidney, so it could drain.

Within a week I was back in the hospital for the same thing. They had since removed the drains without checking to see if anything was making it to the bladder (it wasnt). The kidney doc said "well your numbers are going up so I'm done. The internal med doc had nothing to add. So I started asking pointed questions. Who is driving the bus now? The Urologist. So are one or both of you going to talk to the Urologist? Because if not, I will be right back here in a couple of days. They call the Urologist and she came to see me at 8 on a Sunday night. The lesson here? You MUST be your own advocate. Two days later I had a new tube put in.

During this whole hospitalization ordeal, I quit taking my chemo. I had to cancel two PETS because I was in the hospital. Once out, we quickly rescheduled the PET. I saw Dr. Kocs on Friday. I was expecting progression because of tumor markers. Sadly, I was right.

Bottom line, the cancer is now everywhere!!. And it has change from HR+/HER2- to triple negative ... a very aggressive and resistant cancer. Whee! Over-achieving again! So now what?

Well, we have one treatment option left. It is a new aggressive drug for triple negative MBC. It is a 3-hour infusion (3!) once a week for two weeks, then one week off so my body can recoup. Rinse and repeat. If this doesn't work, then I will only have a matter of weeks, possibly months. 

I am not ready to give up the fight just yet. But I am at peace with whatever comes. Please pray for peace for my family!