Pictures...finally

This was taken the same day I found out I had cancer, November 16, also Tim's birthday.  After his classes in the morning and my appointment, we spent the day together.  We went to lunch and then up the canyon.  Isn't this picture beautiful?  I realized more strongly that day that we are surrounded by beauty, all we have to do is open our eyes.

"The Leon Trio" 

My awesome quartet at our final chamber music recital.  This was just after I found out about cancer. We had a blast this last semester, thank you BARTOK! We rocked Bartok's string quartet No. 2, II.  Support breast cancer by wearing bright pink high heels!

I was able to play the solo violin part for Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 with the USU Chamber Orchestra.  This was my last hoorah because due to my health I was not able to play in the final orchestra concert or even audition for the concerto competition. Someone's watching out for me.

Tim and I. Can anyone guess where we are???

The giant kitchen aid I've been telling you all about. (I forgot to change the setting on my camera back to color after the last time I used it...oops.)

Me and Matt.  He was the radiation therapist who was there for every one of my treatments.

The machine...it moves.

And the final angle.

As of yesterday I am officially done with radiation, I even have certificate congratulating me, wahoooo.  I didn't like radiation much, but I did enjoy working with all the therapists/doctors/nurses, they were wonderful. Thanks!

I met with a surgeon yesterday about the placement of a port.  This surgery is quite routine and will occur on Monday January 9th.  It will last about 45 minutes and recovery shouldn't be too bad.  Basically what they do is place a device, about half the size of a golf ball connected to 8 inches of a thin rubber tube, under my skin about an inch below my collar bone on the left side.  The tube connects directly to a vein so when they poke me, yes with a needle, the drugs will go directly to my blood stream.  I am having deja vous, did I already explain all of this?  Can't remember, but it's fresh on my mind considering I got the official spiel from the surgeon himself.

So I get the port and hopefully that same week I will begin chemo.  It is routine to go directly from the surgery to the first chemo treatment.  Depending on what my chemo plan is I might end up doing that.  I'll keep you posted.

I hope you all have a great New Years Eve. I am just going to chill all night.  I also want to make new years resolutions.  I was going through some papers today and found all of my new years resolutions dating back to 2006.  It's amazing how repetitive my goals are, guess I should get to work and start accomplishing what I write down. Anyhow, hope you make some good goals for 2012!

Radiation

First off I want to apologize for being so slow to update you, I've been a little more distracted since Tim doesn't have class anymore...

I began radiation treatments Monday December 12. There are 14 treatments total which occur 5 days a week.  It's real quick though, I'm in and out in 30 minutes.  The coolest thing about radiation is that they gave me 5 tattoos! Wahooooo! They are the size and shape of a dot from a pen on my skin...some describe them as black freckles.  I will say that if I were a rebel I would have totally gotten a tattoo, but now I think that anyone who gets a tattoo is really stupid because it HURTS, especially on the ribs. Ouch. So it's not all fun and games, they give tattoos for alignment purposes.  There is one in between my breasts, one just above my belly button, one a few inches below my belly button and one on each side about at my waist.  Each treatment I lie on my back and they align my tattoos with red laser beams to make sure they don't zap something that doesn't need zappin'.  I only know that I am being radiated because I hear the machine rumble and a sign lights up on the wall that says, "Beam On." I feel the effects after, but every day is different.  This machine is a monster and looks like a supersize version of a kitchen aid.  That's the best way I have found to describe it. The radiation therapist's tell me that other patients have named it, one such being, "The Death Star," she was a trekkie. Basically it is a large powerful machine that takes a lot of energy to operate. They are treating the spots on my spine and rib in hopes that they can shrink...well in essence, kill all the cancer cells as to ease the pain I have been feeling in my lower back for the past few months before I begin chemotherapy.  That was a long sentence, but I'm not going to go back and edit it. Moving on.  The doctors and nurses went over all the symptoms I could potentially experience from radiation:
1.  Sunburned feeling in the specific areas
2.  Fatigue
3.  Nausea
The first week was not so fun, I felt sick to my stomach and most foods made me want to throw up, though I never actually did.  My mom was up here for my first treatment and then we went for Mexican food. Now if I think of authentic mexican I get an upset stomach.  Same goes for pot roast, which stinks because it was the first pot roast I ever made and I will say it was dang good!  I have been told this is how I will probably feel during chemotherapy.  Every day is a new adventure and I never know what will sound appetizing to me. Other than a change of appetite, I have felt tired.

I have not slept through a night in about 2 weeks because of the pain in my back.  Luckily they gave me a back brace to give extra support for my spine while I am going through radiation.  A major concern the doctors have right now, due to the the tumor on my spine, is that I could get a spinal cord injury which could cause numbness in my legs indefinitely.  At this point I am not too worried about that because my back has been feeling much better the past few days and I have been extra careful not to do anything strenuous.  I don't tell you this to worry you, but just to let you know what is going on.  Nonetheless, keep praying for me.

When I tell people about this, they always ask me if I take any medication for it.  The doctor gave me lortab (a fairly strong dose of it), which knocks me out but doesn't get rid of the shooting pain and I still wake up in a few times a night.  So I don't take that anymore. As for the nausea, I have zofran which does the job, for a little while.  I still really don't like taking drugs so I'm trying to hold off for as long as possible before I become a druggie due to chemo.

I have to chuckle to myself a little because as I was describing some of my symptoms to my sister, Lindsay, she just started laughing at me.  Seriously, how insensitive Linz ;)  I was telling her that  when I wake up in the middle of the night it is a slow and slightly painful process to roll over, I can't bend over and pick things up because of the brace but that I am getting good at squatting, I'm always really tired, I feel nauseated all of the time and a new addition is that I have weird cravings (The only things I wanted for two days were pringles and popped corn).  Sound familiar all you mommies out there?  Don't worry, I'm not pregnant...unless you consider the life-threatening tumors inside of me babies and my radiation therapists murderers, well mostly just Matt.

I met with my oncologist and he recommended having a port installed.  I had no idea what a port was until he described it to me.  It is a place where boats come and go.  They bring goods and ship things off.  Ok, that is a port but not the one I am talking about although it does something similar.  It is a device they will install under my skin (before the end of December?) near my collar bone that connects directly to a vein.  Instead of giving me an IV for every chemo treatment, a port is a more reliable means to get the drugs directly to my bloodstream.  They will still have to poke me with a stupid needle, but they won't miss and I won't look like I've shot up every two weeks :)  I have to say that I hate the idea of having something foreign under my skin! One reason I hate injections is because it is not natural to have something metal and sharp prick your skin however, soon enough I will have a device that lives in me. I will have it removed as soon as I can get away with! Sick!

What's next?  I finish radiation on December 31 then the following week is a freebee before I begin chemotherapy.  What am I going to do that week...what am I not going to do that week?!  I have officially decided that I am going to whack my hair off (typical Kelly move) and dye it super blonde.  I will still probably be in my back brace so I won't be able to do too much, but I'm going to have fun.  I still don't have many details regarding chemo, but I'll know soon enough and then tell you all.

I really love it when people send me cookies and chocolate. (That was Tim, he is reading over my shoulder and said he wanted to add something ;)

I wish you all a very merry Christmas.  My love and gratitude goes out to you all.  Thanks for all of your support and love, I can still feel your prayers very powerfully every day. Thank you!

Some Results

I have news!  Many of you have been asking me what is going on...this is because I have been a bit of a slacker and haven't updated you on the last few tests. We'll breeze through them so I can get to the results you have all been waiting for.

Mammogram-I won't go into detail.  It was not fun.  I was able to make friends with some of the ladies in the waiting room right after though.  I have a feeling that I am going to be making some more elderly friends through all of this considering my case is very rare and this usually happens to women above age 70.

MRI-Not as bad as people make it out to be.  From what I have heard from other people I thought I was going to be in a tube that was closed off on both ends with bright lights and loud noises.  Nope.  The tube was open on both ends and there were no bright lights, however there were very loud noises.  I am a pro at holding still through all these tests so that wasn't a problem.  I was quite focused on the rhythms of the sounds. Lets say if one sound was at metronome mark 160, the other sounded as if it were at 158.  They were so similar, but not quite on.  I couldn't figure it out.  A little frustrating if you ask me, but at least it helped the time pass quicker.

PET Scan-This was the most uncomfortable test for me thus far (minus all the stupid needles!) because I had to place my arms over my head which made them fall asleep.  Not the greatest position when you're supposed to hold still. hmmm. So you're probably wondering what in the world is a PET scan? I've already had a CAT scan, what's next, the DOG scan?  Well for your purposes, it is more sensitive than an MRI.  It has been explained to me a few times what exactly it is and does, but let's be honest all that scientific talk sometimes goes over my head.  They did find something in that test that I will go over in a minute.


After some tests I went in and met with my doctor to go over results.  I was informed that I have two more tumors, one on my lumbar spine and the other on my 11th rib on the right side.  What?!  I know!  Previously when I went in for the mammogram she did an ultrasound of my underarm to check for lymph nodes.  It came back negative. (If the lymph nodes are inflamed this is a sign that cancer has spread to other parts of the body).  I didn't think that it had spread elsewhere, then again I was also unaware that there were other means it can spread; through the blood.  Because of these other spots, and also the size of the tumor in my breast, the most recent diagnosis is stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. Luckily my mom and both of my sisters were able to be there with me when I found out, and Tim came over as soon as he could.  As crazy as this may sound I wasn't very shocked.  I felt calm and collected in the doctors office, I had a clear mind and was able to ask questions and still be my normal self.  Of course this is not what I wanted to hear considering I thought it hadn't spread due to the negative test result on the lymph nodes, but I am ok with it.  Generally I tend to take a step back from any given situation and take into account the best and worst possible situations.  So far every time I get a test result back there is something else leading to the "worst" possible scenario.  The latests result came back today.  I found out that there is another spot near my lungs on the left side which was detected from the PET scan. No bueno.

Plan of action-There are still some tests to be done, but as of right now we are thinking radiation on the spots on my spine and rib. This will take about 3 weeks and I will probably do it in Logan.  Radiation is 5 times a week for about 10-15 minutes each.  After that, chemotherapy for 4-6 months. Blah.  I will go in for an infusion once every 2-3 weeks either in Logan or the Huntsman center, the location is still undecided as of now.  Sometime during the chemo, or after all the treatments, I will undergo a mastectomy and hopefully reconstruction immediately following.  After talking to a few people this seems to be the most logical solution, however it is still subject to change.

Am I surprised...not at all.  Am I ok, yes.  I know things are going to work out.  I don't think it is going to be a pretty road, but I have the faith that things will work out and I will survive this.  From the beginning I have felt peace about everything.  I don't want to talk much about this, but I really don't feel that this is my time to go.  I have never had any serious health problems in my life up until now, so I have a strong, young, healthy body to fight this off. And if that isn't enough, I'm just too darn stubborn and prideful to let cancer win (you can ask Tim about that...)!   I am happy and grateful to be alive.  I have found it is easier to be optimistic knowing that I have been diagnosed with this disease.  That sounds strange, but there are so many bad things I could be focusing on right now if I choose to.  I would rather focus on the little things that make me happy, like brainwashing my niece Scarlett that I am her favorite aunt, sitting in the living room with all the lights off except the christmas tree, being silly with my mom and sisters, cracking corny jokes, trying to get Tim to wear pink because it is the breast cancer color...I could go on.  The past three weeks have been difficult, don't get me wrong, but at the same time it has been so much easier to be happy because that is what I have been searching for.  I have been so focused on being happy that at times I forget I even have cancer.  On the other hand, as time passes the more I realize that this is going to be a tough road to travel.  I am still in the testing and meeting with doctor's phase and have not yet started treatments.  I am going to need these happy moments to fall back on when I am down and sick, I am going to need those guardian angels to keep me going, but most of all I will need our Savior Jesus Christ.