Well life. What can I say? Last Monday Nola, our four year old boxer was hit by a truck and passed away while she was traveling with my husband in Arizona. I sat in my car after work and facetimed with Jeff and Nola while the vet put her to sleep. I know not everyone is a dog/pet person and it may not make sense, but this was my baby girl. When I wanted to have a child with Jeff when we first got married, he felt he was too old to start over with a baby. I eventually accepted this, and going through cancer now I can’t imagine how hard having a toddler would be right now. Nola was our baby together. When we brought her home for the first time she wouldn’t stop licking Jeff and I’s faces. She fit effortlessly into my heart. She loved all of us and couldn’t get close enough to us. She’d follow me from room to room when I was home. I’ve cried so many tears this week and when I think I have no more tears left to cry they somehow keep flowing. We buried Nola in the backyard. The girls made this headstone for her. Our remaining dog, Benny has been so lost and clingy. He cries from time to time and I know he is missing his friend. I’ve heard it said that great grief means you’ve had the opportunity to love greatly. I’m grateful I got to love my sweet, goofy, stubborn, protective Nola girl.

This picture was taken the day after Jeff and I got married on August 23rd, 2020. The meadow we were married in was filled with so much love. I felt as if I’d waited my entire life for Jeff. I still do. I’m grateful God gave Jeff to me. I’ve learned so much about love and life and partnership in the four years that we’ve been married. We had no idea about the challenges we’d face in blending families, working out different parenting styles, managing money together and more recently cancer and starting a business together. To spite life’s challenges I can’t imagine going through them with anyone else. He was on the road for our anniversary but I didn’t feel his love any less.

My work gave out free tickets to a Bees game and so we went. I find even though I’m exhausted most days, if I just stay home lying around it’s not great for my mental health. Anyway, sporting events are mainly about the concessions, right? For my girls it was. Nachos, hot dogs, and pretzels – oh my! Brielle wanted to snatch my wig off so on the way out of the stadium I gave her the go ahead. I walked back to the car with wig in hand and feeling 1000% cooler. Sometimes I don’t feel like pretending I’m ok. I’m bald. I’m losing my eyelashes and eyebrows. Deal with it.

In cancer news I had a breast ultrasound to check to see how effective chemo has been thus far. My lymph node in my axilla has decreased a good bit. One of the masses in my breast has also decreased. The other mass has stayed the same size. I tried not to get too discouraged by this. It’s good news that it has partially responded, and at that point I still had 3 chemo infusions to go. My oncologist said sometimes inflammation caused by chemo can keep masses the same size, but the cancer cells have died. The truth is hormone positive breast cancer does not always respond to chemotherapy, which is why with stage 4 they often put women on hormone blockers and tumor inhibitors instead. At my recent infusion my oncologist said they’d do a PET scan after my chemo is done. My last infusion should be Sept. 20th. I meet with my surgeon a week later. If the PET scan shows the cancer has spread to other places they will forego surgery and put me on the hormone blockers and tumor inhibitors to see how my body responds. My oncologist said she doesn’t expect this will be the case, but she had to broach the subject anyway. If it has stayed in the places we already know about, or has decreased then if the surgeon agrees, we can do surgery. I was pretty rocked by the possibility that the cancer could spread elsewhere while I’m on chemo. I keep reminding myself that she said she didn’t think it was likely.

It’s tricky because I’m in this gray area where I’m not early stage breast cancer, but I’m not exactly fully metastatic either. There exists two schools of thought for de novo oligometastatic breast cancer (oligometastatic = metastatic to 3 or less areas outside of the breast and de novo = metastatic upon initial diagnosis). One is the palliative approach where the thought is that disease progression is inevitable so let’s not do anything drastic or unnecessary…like surgery, chemo or radiation. This is how my original oncologist wanted to approach my diagnosis. The other approach is that oligometastatic disease is unique and has a chance to be cured, or at least the years of progression-free survival can be prolonged if treated the way early breast cancer is treated. There have been small studies that show with de novo oligometastatic disease surgery that decreases tumor burden can affect long-term survival in a favorable way.

We’ll see what my PET scan shows, but it makes me nervous because so far I feel the team at the Huntsman favors treating with palliative intent even though they were eventually willing to treat curatively after my second opinion at MD Anderson. I really love my new oncologist. I know doctors have to explain all possible outcomes, but it puts a lot of stress on the patient. All the uncertainty makes it hard to keep moving forward with faith this will work. I want desperately to have this unshakable faith this will give me decades more of life. I want to be that miracle story you hear about. I strive to have this amazing positive attitude that aides in healing, but gosh dang it is hard some days.

Especially today. My husband is stuck in Phoenix because his semi truck broke down. The bill could be upwards of $6000. They should know more tomorrow. It’s like we’re living in a country music song. Jeff could sing, “My wife has cancer. My dog just died and my truck broke down.” This was a long post. If you’re still reading. I appreciate it. I’m praying for a miracle. Feel free to join me.