Bad News :(

So as you all know, I was really hoping that my next phase of treatment would be AC (adriamycin and cytoxan). AC treatment would have been 4 rounds administered every other week. The other choice was FEC (5-Fluorouracil, Epirubicin, and Cytoxan), which would be administered every three weeks. I guess the treatments are very similar, but because FEC is composed of three drugs, I would need three weeks to recover. I wanted AC only because it would be done sooner!

Anyway, today my onc called to let me know what our course of action would be. I was very disappointed to find out I will be doing FEC. So another 12 weeks of chemo is on the horizon. An extra month of this crap-- great.

I wasn't as upset as I thought I'd be, but I am pretty bummed out.

I still have an appointment with my onc on Monday to discuss stuff, but she told me some things on the phone. I requested that she call me as soon as she knew which meds I would take because I feel like I have no idea what's going to happen to me, and I'd like to make plans.

She told me some stuff though: one tumor shrank from 2.6 cm to .9 cm and the other from 2.3 cm to 1.3 cm. I thought I remembered my onc saying that if both were shrunk to 1 cm or smaller, then we'd do AC. So I wasn't totally surprised. She also said that originally, I had 2 lymph nodes that were looking "suspicious." The ultrasound showed that one was 1.7 cm before and is the same now. :( I don't know how bad that is, but she did say that it doesn't necessarily mean there's cancer there for sure. The other node was 1 cm, and it didn't show up in the ultrasound, but my onc expressed some doubt that the tech went deep enough. She commented that it was a good reduction, but to get the best results, we need to do FEC.

Some good things: the E has less of a chance for heart toxicity than A, so that's good. And the C is supposed to really knock out tumors, so I'm still hoping and expecting to see more shrinkage next time. And this is supposed to give us a better chance at shrinking the tumors and getting me better, so that's good.

I don't know if I told you this, but I learned from my onc that when you're doing neo-adjuvant treatment, it's the stage you are BEFORE surgery and AFTER chemo that counts for your prognosis. So if I can get to Stage 1 or Stage 0 (dare to dream!), then my prognosis would be improved from being Stage 2.

Anyway, I hope this doesn't blow my dreams for skiing out of the water. It certainly will change them, but we'll just have to see how it goes. I hate that I can't make any long-term plans because I don't know what's going to happen as far as surgery and recovery times go, and whether I'll be doing 5 weeks or radiation, or what... FRUSTRATING.

But, to end on a lighter note, I've completed all 12 infusions of Taxol, and that's really something! I thought it would put me at 12/20 weeks, but it turns out I'm a little less than 12/24. So halfway. I know I said this was going to be "on a lighter note," but I have to say looking back on these 12 weeks, it feels like a long time. There was a time when I felt like time was really going by, and I couldn't believe I had done, say, 8 treatments already. Now I feel like time has morphed into molasses in January. In fact, I get my last infusion on this nonsense FEC schedule on Dec. 30, I think. So maybe I will be molasses in January.

Oh well.

Cancer is for the birds.