We have new updates to share. Unfortunately my cancer has returned. It is in my brain now. I have over 40 tumors that are in various areas of my brain. For a couple months now I've been having visual disturbances and mild headaches. I didn't think much of them and had an appointment scheduled to see my eye doctor. Two weeks ago I had my regular follow up oncology appointment and mentioned them to him. He suggested I get an MRI of my brain just to make sure. Almost two weeks ago I had the MRI and got the results the next day which was a Friday. It wasn't what we were expecting... My Dr isn't in the office on Fridays so we waited until Monday to see what the plan was. He immediately had me go to the radiation oncologist to get set up for radiation the next day. I'm almost done with 10 whole brain radiation treatments. I go every day and let inside a machine that looks like a CT scan for about 20 minutes for each treatment. I find it is a good opportunity to pray and thank God for my many blessings. Monday will be my last radiation treatment and I will meet with my oncologist again Monday as well to find out what exactly we will do next. I know it will be chemotherapy but don't know the exact details. He was waiting for my update scans of the rest of my body to make sure it hasn't come back in the rest of my body. Which it hasn't! The immunotherapy I've been doing has been working. Unfortunately, it doesn't go through the blood brain barrier. The oncologist said 1 in 5 patients with HER2 positive breast cancer have it travel to their brain. They were just hoping it wouldn't happen for me. They are all extremely optimistic and said things should go well with treatments, I just have another mountain to climb right now.
I know people will ask what we need. So I thought I'd include a list.
1. Prayers! Any and all prayers. They help so much. We felt everyone's prayers the first go around and also feel the prayers from those we've told already. Thank you so much for prayers on behalf of me and my family.
2. A nice juicer. I am going to try some different eating along with the chemo and radiation. One thing that is recommended is juicing to get more vitamins and nutrients. I'm hopeful it will help me have more energy. We've had a juicer before but it didn't produce much juice... The pulp catcher would be full before there was enough juice to drink. I've been looking for a good juicer for a good price, but if anyone has one sitting around they no longer want we'd love to have it.
3. Joe works as an agent for New York Life. It is actually the perfect job while going through this because he is able to take me to appointments as necessary and make his own schedule. If you or anyone you know needs life insurance (term or whole life), annuities, long term care insurance, etc. Please reach out to him! He does an amazing job and loves his clients. He is easy to work with. This is how he earns money for our family. He is also planning on helping with Medicare soon (he just needs to finish licensing for that) we'll let you all know when he's ready to start helping clients with that. He can discuss all the Medicare options to see if you or a loved one are getting the best Medicare policy.
These are the main things I can think of. We love you all and thank you for all the love that has been shown to our family over the years. I will try to keep everyone updated as things change.
