Radiation

 When we found out that he cancer had metastasized to my spine, the doctors decided I needed to have radiation to shrink the tumors on my spine.  They are pressing against my spinal cord and they don't want it to cause paralysis.  I also am waiting on my port being placed tomorrow and they can't start chemo until after that so they wanted to start something they can work on in the meantime. I am having 10 days of radiation.  They originally said it wouldn't cause any side effects. After my first appointment, they realized that it was a large area they were treating and would probably cause nausea and vomiting, which it has.  It also makes me extremely tired, but I have learned that naps and nausea meds are my friends. :) I just finished my 5th treatment today so I am over half way done! 

Tomorrow I get my port placed and then after Thanksgiving we will start chemotherapy.  It is planned on going on for quite a long time until my body can't handle it anymore or they need to try a new chemotherapy drug.  They are also planning on doing immunotherapy drugs with the chemo which will help fight my specific type of breast cancer.  We are extremely hopeful that all this will work and shrink and even kill the tumors. (doctors haven't said they can be killed completely, but that is my hope and prayer).

I do have another MRI scheduled for Monday as well.  The first MRI was just my lumbar spine.  This one is supposed to be Thoracic spine and Brain. We just want to make sure it hasn't spread elsewhere that they didn't see before.  The PET scan they originally did showed a tumor on my L4 vertebra but when they did the MRI it showed tumors from L5 to T 10 which was as high as they could see on that MRI.  They weren't expecting that because the PET scan is typically a better scan.  That is why we are doing further scans to see if it goes farther then we saw.  I haven't had a ton of brain symptoms of cancer but have had headaches so that is why we are doing that scan to rule anything out.