Positive Energy Abounds!! :)

Keep it coming!:)  Chemo starts Friday and I'll be heading in every three weeks for six rounds... May 27, June 17, July 8 and 29 (bonus month!), August 19, and Sept 9.  I'm not excited about it, but I'm ready.  Yes, nervous with a touch of dread... but ready.

This week has been full of positive energy thus far, which I'm taking as a good omen:) The weekend included a delicious barbeque at some friends' house and McAuley's graduation ceremony (woohoo!); Isis' middle school (yeeks!) parent orientation was Monday night and I think it's going to be a smooth transition and a great year for her; yesterday afternoon I taught one of my favorite little dance classes (my 2nd week back!) at Drouin and then ventured out last night for a night of great live music and great people; today (in the ever elusive sun that decided to grace us with its presence:) yay!) I took a most wonderful soul-nourishing walk in the woods (nothing like a good dose of Mother Nature to lift your spirits! trees, moss, earth, the river, bird songs... joy:) ), and tonight went to my first dance class since before surgery (pointe no less) and felt strong and enjoyed every minute!:)  In essence I guess I feel like I am, albeit slowly and with great thought, caution, and awareness, reclaiming my life - which I've missed!!  Now if only I could get all those recently graduated McAuley seniors to come back to make up the couple weeks of physics I was out for... ;)

So I'm holding on to this positive trend with all of my might!... tomorrow I intend to balance productivity (oh, the never ending list... ) with much cultivation of strength, a bit of fun, and some hearty nurturing -- and I will walk into the oncologist's office Friday morning a warrior - in mind, body and spirit - prepared to gracefully begin the next phase of ushering this uninvited guest out of my body for good.

peace, love and gratitude...

Oncotype DX results came back high:(

... email sent Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Hello...
So the oncotype dx results are officially in, and unfortunately my 'risk for recurrence' is decidedly in the high range. My treatment will therefore include six rounds of chemo (to begin next week), and then radiation in the fall. Won’t make for a great “What I did over summer vacation” essay, but will hopefully make for a great 80^th birthday party, right?

I got the news Friday afternoon and have shed many a tear in the last few days while my emotions have run the gamut. Chemo is proving to be a veritable mountain as I struggle to accept it and mentally prepare; much more so than surgery was. I’m not sure if this is because I am attempting to prepare for 18 weeks of poisoning my body, the ensuing side effects, and going bald as opposed to a single morning of surgery through which I was able to ‘sleep’ and then a mostly physical recovery… or perhaps I just used up most of my “be brave, stay positive, march forward!” energy reserves getting through step one, and need to cultivate more for steps two and three. (I’m working on it! It would be much easier if it would stop raining so the sun could come out again… )

Regardless, chemo will be neither easy nor fun... but it will seek and destroy, eradicating my body of rogue cancer cells that (mistakenly) think they escaped their doom by fleeing the right breast before surgery… I’ll get through it and it will be but a distant bad memory… and I guess I’ll become a hat person for a while. fyi - no one is allowed to complain to me about having a "bad hair day" again!

That’s the news for now… peace and love to all!

xo

Jamie

Update post surgery...

(As part of my celebration of and goodbye to my breasts and lymph nodes prior to surgery, a friend who is an amazing henna artist graciously 'tattooed' me... bringing peace, strength and beauty to a difficult letting go <3
thank you, Mary... )




...email sent Friday, May 6, 2011

Greetings from Maine , post surgery and in the midst of figuring out what comes next…

I think most everyone on this list received an email from my mom last week with a brief update regarding the initial pathology report – you can be certain an email from me at that point would have been barely readable… though perhaps entertaining:) Those of you near enough to visit who had the pleasure of spending time with me while I was “under the influence” of oxy-narcotics know all too well what I’m talking about. (btw, I can’t guarantee I remember all of those visits, so if you meant to come and didn’t feel free to claim you did and make up a good story to go along… )

Surgery went very well! – I feel like I went in early Monday morning calm, full of trust, and as ready as I could have been. One nurse noted my calmness and sense of humor with surprise, stating that if she were about to go into surgery she’d be “crying and freaking out” (not sure that’s textbook nursing, but at least she felt comfortable enough to share how she really felt… ). Just before heading in my breast surgeon’s nurse, who is trained in therapeutic touch, did a bit of energy work on me and said I felt completely strong and balanced – much more reassuring:)

The morning was also full of visits from surgeons, the anesthesiologist and a number of nurses… a great team all around!

The last few things I remember: injection… we are rolling down the hallway to the OR, on my right is a lovely picture of a dock heading out onto the ocean or a lake… looks beautiful; on my left the hallway turns – as we began turning left I ask “Wait, can’t we go that way?” pointing to the picture… through some big doors and the lights are crazy bright, there are what seem to be tons of people in scrubs and paper hats, big metal arms overhead, my anesthesiologist in his goofy purple hat, and…

“Jamie, Jamie…” – 3 ½ hours later, all done, and “awake” in the recovery room!

I can’t say I remember much of the rest of Monday, but I ate a giant bowl of tasty oatmeal, hung out with Mom, Papa, and Isis, experienced morphine for the first time, and thus recovery began.

I won’t bore you with details between then and Friday, they’re a bit fuzzy anyway.

Friday we got the path report – good news and bad news, but we’ll focus on the good… no lymph node involvement! Yay! As my mom wrote there were some whammies too though… aggressive strain, and evidence of cancerous cells traveling in my blood stream within the breast (meaning they have access to all the places blood flows… ick), and not so great margins (i.e. she couldn’t scoop much out around the cancer due to my being “a skinny broad”, leaving a heightened chance of cancer cells being left in the bits of breast tissue that are inevitably left behind along the chest wall (pectoral muscle) and under the skin). More good news, on paper it’s only a stage I cancer! Yay! But as she put it, there are “boring” stage I cancers, and “not so boring” stage I cancers… why would I have boring cancer?! Ugh…

So that brings us to this week – a week of ups and downs and lots of appointments. On the up side I weaned myself from the crazy pain killers and began to get my brain and cadence back. Definitely not completely myself yet, but getting there… sweet comment from my father “I kind of liked Jamie last week when she talked slowly and really had to think before she said anything…”.

Appointment number one was with the plastic surgeon – I had my drains removed… decidedly not a fun experience, but I got to go home and take a shower!!, and feel human again:)

Appointment number two was with my oncologist who introduced us to a couple incredibly valuable tools that brought sighs of relief all around. The first is a data base that the doc is able to plug your stats into and get a bar graph (based on data collected over many years from tens of thousands of women) showing your chances of dying from the cancer you have in the next 10 years. It sounds morbid, but wait… So with my data plugged in, walking away right now and not doing any more treatment I have an 81% survival rate… with hormone treatment for the next 5 years, it goes up to 88%, and with hormone treatment and chemotherapy (assuming I’d need it), it goes up to 93%. (btw, roughly 2% of the remaining 7% takes into account the chance of death by some other cause… leaving only a 5% chance – that’s good news, really!) The second resource is a relatively new test called Oncotype DX where they are able to analyze the DNA from a cancerous tumor and assess the risk of recurrence. Again, it is empirically based data gathered over time and is graphable and pretty cut and dry. (being a science geek of sorts, I like that) A score is returned to you and you fall within 3 categories – low, medium, or high risk. If a low risk score is returned studies have shown that chemotherapy is of no benefit (i.e. the risks are greater than the benefits)… so the hope is that a low score comes back and I can avoid chemo and keep my hair!!... however, if the score comes back medium or high risk the news is still not all bad – the recommendation would be 4 to 6 treatments of a “second generation” chemo (mid-level horribleness). I should know in 7 to 10 days.

Finally, today we met with my radiation oncologist, and radiation will be a definite part of my future (damn bad margins)… and will either be this summer or in the fall depending on the chemo outcome. The prediction is that being “young”, healthy and fit that I shouldn’t have complications or side effects to speak of.

Whew, I hope I didn’t put anyone to sleep with all of that… on a more personal note we are all hanging in there! I’ve had my melt downs and certainly miss my “old life”… but am also trying to see this down time as something positive, and know that an end is in sight and this will all be a (shitty) blip on the radar at some point in the not too distant future. Isis is holding up extraordinarily well, just brought home a glowing progress report in her last trimester before middle school, and is dancing and hanging out with friends with gusto. She’s also been very gentle with me and I think “gets” what is happening on a deeper level than probably any of us know. Mom and Papa are amazing, I wouldn’t be able to do this without them – and I know it is even harder for them at times than it is for me. We also have wonderful friends bringing food and transporting Isis and offering many other services that I am sure to take them up on as I transition back to my own house in the next couple weeks…

Thank you all for your positive energy, warm thoughts, love, prayers, ceremonies, phone calls, cards, care packages, visits… every bit has helped me remain positive and heal… I love you all!

Peace, love, and health…

xoxo

Jamie

The day my life changed: April 5, 2011...

...email sent Monday, April 18

Hello all,

Most of you have been in touch with either my mom or myself in this last almost 2 weeks (that have felt like an eternity) during which my life has changed in almost every way possible. I have not had the chance to talk to many of you, and even those who I have spoken to or have spoken with my mom may not know all that is going on at this point... so I wanted to just let everyone know where things stand, when things are happening, and where I am with it all.

So after finding a lump, going in for a mammogram and ultrasound, and being kept for biopsies, I was diagnosed two weeks ago tomorrow with breast cancer - invasive ductal carcinoma. They know it is invasive as it is growing outside the duct itself, but we do not know where or how far it has traveled, and will not find that out until post surgery. The cancer is in my right breast and currently my left breast looks 'clean', however I am opting for a double mastectomy as I'd prefer to only go through this all one time! At the time of surgery they will also remove a few lymph nodes (the sentinel nodes, or the first ones in the blood supply from the breast) to see if cancer has spread to them. Upon physical examination, Dr. Molin (my amazing breast doc) does not feel anything that causes alarm, so we are hoping with all of our might that it has not traveled to them.

I will go in for surgery early the morning of Monday, April 25. I go in at 6am and surgery is scheduled from about 8 to noon. Big fun. They will be doing stage one of reconstruction at the same time, which is part of what makes it such a long morning... I'm hoping to look something like Dolly Parton when this is all over;) I'll have a follow up appointment probably Friday of that week to go over pathology reports, and then meet with my oncologist May 4 to discuss what my long term treatment will look like.

I've had a bit of time up to now to process, learn, make decisions and begin the preparation and strengthening process I need as I enter surgery and recovery. I'm feeling strong, fearful, sad, incredibly supported and loved, frustrated, grateful, exhausted... you name it.
I've been working with a wonderful qi gong instructor I used to take classes from, an energy and lymph healer, and an acupuncturist along with my Western docs. I am also trying to eat heartily, think positively, and embrace this all in as positive a light as I can... fear, anger, and stress simply sap me of the energy I so desperately need to strengthen, balance and heal myself. Generally speaking I feel like I'm in a good place, in good hands, and doing exactly what I need to be to get through this with as much strength, grace, and poise as possible.

I am being surrounded by love and support from far and wide and feel it all pouring in daily - everyone at Catherine McAuley High School where I work is being amazing (faculty, admin, students, parents, friends... ), and our "dance family" who Isis and I spend so much of our time with are equally supportive... I am beyond grateful to have mom and papa here as they have already done so much and this "journey" has barely begun... and to my family and friends all over the world, I thank you for your emails, notes, calls, love, energy and prayers that are pouring in - they all mean so much and add to my strength moving forward. All of this along with our own strength and each other will get me and Isis through this crazy few months we have ahead.

Isis is doing ok - she's internalizing most of what she's feeling right now , but was able to express last night that she really doesn't understand what's going on yet. I think April 25th when I go in for / come out of surgery, it will all become very real to her. She also has an amazing support system consisting of her teachers at school, a few very close school friends, teachers, friends, and parents at dance, the plethora of McAuley students who have offered to babysit this summer who all adore her, all of you who are sending her love and cards and emails, and of course my parents down the street who would do anything for her!

Back to some logistics...
The night after surgery I'll be at the hospital (Mercy Fore River Campus in Portland), and as long as pain is under control (which it should be considering the insane amount of narcotics and muscle relaxants that will be flowing through my blood... ) I'll go "home" the 26th. Isis and I will be living at my parents' house for at least 2 weeks at that point.

I will certainly keep everyone posted as I find things out. I may start some sort of blog for updates... in which case I will let people know. Please feel free to forward this along to people not on the list above - no intention of excluding people, piecing together an all inclusive list is a daunting task.

There are not words to thank you all enough for the love and support you are sending... I know we'll all get through this... and everyone says you come out the other side stronger and wiser and with a better sense of humor... I already thought I was pretty tough and smart and funny, but what do I know?!?

Love to you all!!
xoxox
Jamie