The last two weeks since coming home from surgery have honestly felt like two months. Healing and recovery are time consuming. Who knew? It's become an overused cliché to me now, but it's so true that every day gets better. So here's my recap from the last two weeks:
I spent the first two nights sleeping in Bernard, the electric recliner chair that we rented for a month. I woke up 3-4 times per night needing water or the bathroom or painkillers. Sweet Shaw leapt into action every time I called out for him. I couldn't reach the button to recline/incline, so he need to help me every time I needed to move. After two nights I started to feel good enough to sleep in bed, using an amazing memory foam set like this that helped me stay in a comfortable position sleeping on my back. Mentally and emotionally it really helped to be in my own bed, and we were both able to sleep through the night. At least twice per day Shaw would also help me clean and empty the two drains and tubes that came out just below my armpits on my left and right side. That was my least favorite part of each day. My mom and Shaw both helped drive me to appointments, the most important of which being my sessions in the hyperbaric chamber. This little miracle of pressurized air contributed significantly to my healing, and made some very scary looking dark red colors go away.
On Friday night when we returned from the hospital we began IVF treatment. One reason for doing IVF now is to save eggs in anticipation of potentially needing chemotherapy, which would damage if not destroy my reproductive organs. The other reason is that because my cancer was mostly fed by hormones it is beneficial to limit the amount of time that hormones are racing around my body. So to implant vs. try naturally could reduce that hormonal time by months if not years. Each night Shaw prepared the needles and injected me with 2-3 hormone shots to help me create multiple eggs. After a few evenings of this we started to get into a rhythm. I held an ice cube on my belly, put on Bob Marley, closed my eyes, and pretended I was on some idyllic Caribbean island. Once my belly was numb Shaw would count down, "Three...two...one..." and I barely felt the shots. Towards the end of the 12 day treatment I started to feel a bit bloated, but overall the process was easy.
On Wednesday 9/25 I had 27 eggs extracted, 19 of which were mature enough to be fertilized. We froze 9 eggs by themselves and added a wee bit of Shaw to ten eggs. Out of those ten, seven became fertilized and formed an embryo. We are getting almost daily updates on the progress of these little guys, knowing that not all will form into perfect blastocysts. Here's a nice day-by-day look into what's happening: A Guide to Embryo Development After Retrieval. This part of the process is surprisingly stressful. I had no idea that I would feel this way, simply because I'm not at all thinking of having a child right now...and yet we are creating our potential future children right now. It's really hard to think about not all seven embryos making it to the blastocyst phase (the phase to reach before freezing/implanting) and not all being good enough quality, but that's really the natural order of things. If none of the embryos make it to the blastocyst stage then they won't be viable and will not be frozen. The silver lining through it all is that we do have nine eggs in waiting.
In other news....I WILL NOT NEED TO HAVE CHEMOTHERAPY!!!!!!!!! I got the good news from my oncologist on Thursday. He based the decision on my Oncotype DX genomic test, a prognostic and predictive test that analyzes the activity of 21 genes that influence how likely a cancer is to grow and respond to treatment. My Oncotype score is 11, so I fall right in the middle of the low-risk recurrence area of the chart of 0-18. Essentially with a score of 11 the benefit of chemotherapy is likely to be small and won't outweigh the risks of the slew of side effects that come along with chemo. After the appointment Shaw and I immediately went out for McConnell's to celebrate. I will start taking Tamoxifen in early November, once I'm fully healed from surgery. Tamoxifen is the go-to selective estrogen receptor modulator. This will be the first time in my life that I will be on a medication for longer than two weeks....and actually I'll be on Tamoxifen for at least five years. The exciting aspect is that I will be taking one little magic pill every day that will help ward off cancer recurrence.
The last week has been filled with lots of rest and relaxation. We celebrated Shaw's birthday on the 22nd and I've had visitors from all over - Shaw's Aunt Christina from Houston and my best friend Jackie from New York have brightened up my world this week. I've had visits from sweet friends bringing meals and treats. A big group of friends took me out for dinner and a movie earlier in the week and I actually felt...normal. Feeling relatively normal is a hard thing for me to deal with right now. I want to be fully normal...not "normal" with an underlying major recovery taking place in my body and a mountain of medication straight ahead. I'm in that middle stage of transition where I'm halfway between the old normal and the new normal...reaching back lovingly and reaching forward hopefully, but feeling extremely uncomfortable without my feet solidly planted in one or the other. I'm not worried about getting there and, as I said at the beginning of this post, every day gets better.
I spent the first two nights sleeping in Bernard, the electric recliner chair that we rented for a month. I woke up 3-4 times per night needing water or the bathroom or painkillers. Sweet Shaw leapt into action every time I called out for him. I couldn't reach the button to recline/incline, so he need to help me every time I needed to move. After two nights I started to feel good enough to sleep in bed, using an amazing memory foam set like this that helped me stay in a comfortable position sleeping on my back. Mentally and emotionally it really helped to be in my own bed, and we were both able to sleep through the night. At least twice per day Shaw would also help me clean and empty the two drains and tubes that came out just below my armpits on my left and right side. That was my least favorite part of each day. My mom and Shaw both helped drive me to appointments, the most important of which being my sessions in the hyperbaric chamber. This little miracle of pressurized air contributed significantly to my healing, and made some very scary looking dark red colors go away.
On Friday night when we returned from the hospital we began IVF treatment. One reason for doing IVF now is to save eggs in anticipation of potentially needing chemotherapy, which would damage if not destroy my reproductive organs. The other reason is that because my cancer was mostly fed by hormones it is beneficial to limit the amount of time that hormones are racing around my body. So to implant vs. try naturally could reduce that hormonal time by months if not years. Each night Shaw prepared the needles and injected me with 2-3 hormone shots to help me create multiple eggs. After a few evenings of this we started to get into a rhythm. I held an ice cube on my belly, put on Bob Marley, closed my eyes, and pretended I was on some idyllic Caribbean island. Once my belly was numb Shaw would count down, "Three...two...one..." and I barely felt the shots. Towards the end of the 12 day treatment I started to feel a bit bloated, but overall the process was easy.
On Wednesday 9/25 I had 27 eggs extracted, 19 of which were mature enough to be fertilized. We froze 9 eggs by themselves and added a wee bit of Shaw to ten eggs. Out of those ten, seven became fertilized and formed an embryo. We are getting almost daily updates on the progress of these little guys, knowing that not all will form into perfect blastocysts. Here's a nice day-by-day look into what's happening: A Guide to Embryo Development After Retrieval. This part of the process is surprisingly stressful. I had no idea that I would feel this way, simply because I'm not at all thinking of having a child right now...and yet we are creating our potential future children right now. It's really hard to think about not all seven embryos making it to the blastocyst phase (the phase to reach before freezing/implanting) and not all being good enough quality, but that's really the natural order of things. If none of the embryos make it to the blastocyst stage then they won't be viable and will not be frozen. The silver lining through it all is that we do have nine eggs in waiting.
In other news....I WILL NOT NEED TO HAVE CHEMOTHERAPY!!!!!!!!! I got the good news from my oncologist on Thursday. He based the decision on my Oncotype DX genomic test, a prognostic and predictive test that analyzes the activity of 21 genes that influence how likely a cancer is to grow and respond to treatment. My Oncotype score is 11, so I fall right in the middle of the low-risk recurrence area of the chart of 0-18. Essentially with a score of 11 the benefit of chemotherapy is likely to be small and won't outweigh the risks of the slew of side effects that come along with chemo. After the appointment Shaw and I immediately went out for McConnell's to celebrate. I will start taking Tamoxifen in early November, once I'm fully healed from surgery. Tamoxifen is the go-to selective estrogen receptor modulator. This will be the first time in my life that I will be on a medication for longer than two weeks....and actually I'll be on Tamoxifen for at least five years. The exciting aspect is that I will be taking one little magic pill every day that will help ward off cancer recurrence.
The last week has been filled with lots of rest and relaxation. We celebrated Shaw's birthday on the 22nd and I've had visitors from all over - Shaw's Aunt Christina from Houston and my best friend Jackie from New York have brightened up my world this week. I've had visits from sweet friends bringing meals and treats. A big group of friends took me out for dinner and a movie earlier in the week and I actually felt...normal. Feeling relatively normal is a hard thing for me to deal with right now. I want to be fully normal...not "normal" with an underlying major recovery taking place in my body and a mountain of medication straight ahead. I'm in that middle stage of transition where I'm halfway between the old normal and the new normal...reaching back lovingly and reaching forward hopefully, but feeling extremely uncomfortable without my feet solidly planted in one or the other. I'm not worried about getting there and, as I said at the beginning of this post, every day gets better.
