Journey with Mary D

August 29th began my CHEMO journey.  We knew it would be a long and stressful day.  Everyone at TN Oncology has been so nice to us.  After blood work and a visit with Kelsey, my nurse practitioner.  We headed to the treatment room.  Claimed my chair.  Then met my nurse, Meredith, for the day.  She was great and explained everything that was  getting ready to happen.  

We decided that we would travel to Nashville and go through the Sarah Cannon Cancer Center.  My first visit was with my surgeon,  Dr. Cooper.  This is when we learned more information about my Cancer, T riple Negative Breast Cancer is the diagnosis .  FYI I quickly learned not to google it, yikes.  I have a team of doctors with over 100 years experience so we are very happy with the care that I will receive.  It was decided the best course of action is to do Chemotherapy first then surgery.  So I was referred to my oncologist Dr. Hamilton.  And MRI was ordered as well. So remember back in June we were doing a lot of waiting, well, now things started moving and moving fast .  Met with Dr. Hamilton on a Wednesday and a treatment plan was developed.  Went that Friday to have my port put in and started CHEMO on Monday, August 29th. My Treatment Plan: 12 weeks of CHEMO (every Monday to Nashville we go) have an MRI to see how the spot is responding 12 more weeks of CHEMO (1 time every 3 week

Once I knew it was cancer, I didn’t care who knew.  If I saw you in person, I probably told you.  But I didn’t post on Facebook, because I still don’t want my mom to worry.  I asked Lyle if he had told anyone, and he said NO not yet, he was waiting until it came up.  And my response was “when would it come up in conversation that I have cancer” we both laughed about that.  FYI, Lyle is a pretty private person, so this has not been easy on him. But I know the more people that know the more prayers and good vibes I will have, which is what I need right now.  

So, I asked when I went in for the infection on the biopsy how they would tell me about my results. She said if they were negative they would tell me on the phone or if it was positive they would have me come in for a consultation.  So the wait continues. Remember I said that the results could take 5 to 7 business days, yep it took all 7 days. I got the call in the late afternoon, they wanted to see me and Lyle at the clinic at 5pm.  So this is when I officially hear the words, the results show it is cancerous . OMG now what.  We were given options of what the next steps should be.  She gave us options of people she would refer us to.  We took the night to digest it all with plans to tell her in the morning what direction we wanted to go. We headed home and told the boys. Then, Lyle was a champ and called my sister, which of course knew what I had been going through.  So you can imagine as soon as she saw his number come up she knew that it wasn’t good news.  We aren’t telling my mom y