SherBear's Journey with Breast Cancer

I found a lump...too busy at Christmas time to go see the doc, and thought I would just wait til after Christmas when I had a physical exam scheduled to get it checked, sure it was nothing. Doc sent me for a mammogram/ultrasound the next day; you know something is very wrong when the technician gets very quiet, stops chatting, and calls in the radiologist to talk to me! He said he was "extremely concerned", and wants me to have a biopsy asap. I was just getting ready to leave to go for 9 days with my daughter to Germany, so had to go on my trip knowing something was probably wrong, but had to wait for the biopsy the day after I returned. Diagnosis call was the next morning. I sat on my couch on Jan. 11th in my robe with my daughters, watching the snow slowly fall outside my window, not talking, tears rolling down my cheeks. When my husband came home, we sat quietly together and cried.

I got in a clinical trial right away, but ended up not getting the test drug. I knew my doc was disappointed because he thought this would be a potentially great benefit for me. I was very emotional and upset that being in the study delayed the start of my neo adjuvant chemotherapy since I had to have another scan done, and another biopsy before they could start the chemo...I just wanted them to do SOMETHING to start getting rid of this cancer!

Chemotherapy for me included: a port placed; being knocked for a loop from the Benadryl in the IV; not sleeping every Monday night after the steroids in the IV; being "Super-Mom" hyper on Tuesday because of the steroids; hair falling out began three weeks after I started; and lots of fatigue, queasiness, toenails and finger nails turning purple and getting very thick and peeling and hard to cut, one started falling off. Very dry skin, sores in my nose, body aches, urinary tract infection.

Huh? What did you say I was supposed to do?

As my 12 year old daughter said, "This is the year of watching Mom get in the chair, watching Mom get out of the chair...watching Mom get on the couch, watching Mom get off the couch!" Well, maybe not quite that bad...I was still able to drive them to most of their activities, etc., but I had to really pace myself, not overplan my days, and make sure I had time to lie down and rest each day.

Three weeks after chemo started I was in a wig shop preparing for when my hair would begin falling out; as I was trying on wigs, the stylist was combing my hair and showed me that my hair was already beginning to fall out...I cried, she buzzed it all off, and chose a wig which was really similar to the way my hair was styled before. She took so much time and care with styling and cutting it to look the way I had my own hair...I am very glad that I went into the shop before I actually lost all my hair so that she could see how I looked normally. Another idea is to take several pictures of your hair before you lose it if you really want to just look like yourself; that way, you can show them to the wig stylist and they can help you select and style a wig very close to your look.