I cannot live in the in-between, or the upside-down with the demagorgons – shout out to stranger things! Because of this I am living my life as though I have stage IV breast cancer. A PET scan done last week showed a few sub-centimeter spots in my chest that are in the radiologist’s words “highly suspicious” of metastatic disease. In layman’s terms – shit just got real and my cancer has spread to my lungs.
Metastatic breast cancer is a terminal disease. It is treated as a chronic illness – that sounds much more manageable to me. I met with my oncologist a few days after the scan to talk next steps. The urgency I felt and still feel to move on with my treatment plan is not the urgency felt by the medical system.
My oncologist said the time frame would be a few days to get the tissue sample from my chest, followed by a few days to wait for the pathology to come back. After that she can start me on a PARP inhibitor, which I am hopeful is my magic ticket out of this shit ride. If and when the pathology comes back positive for cancer, my oncologist will send my original tumor from my mastectomy in February for genomic testing. This will help determine whether or not there are other treatments available that my specific cancer will be responsive to.
This is what my oncologist thinks the time frame is and should be. In reality here is the actual timeline of events. My PET scan was performed on July 18th. My procedure (an IR guided FNA) will be performed on August 1st. Based on my estimates, it will be about a month from the knowledge that there is a high suspicion of metastasis before I can start treatment.
You, the reader, may be wondering but isn’t this a deadly disease? And, aren’t we pretty certain that this is metastasis? Why, yes, reader, you are correct. But we are hurrying up and waiting. This is what I have started to respond with when friends and family ask what my new treatment plan is. Well, I say, we are hurrying up and waiting.
I won’t get up on my soap box about the medical system just yet. I likely will at some point. But, I am frustrated. At the same time I am trying to apply some of the tenets of Alcoholics Anonymous and only control what I can control. Not that it should matter, but I am not an alcoholic, but I am picking and choosing some of the twelve steps as part of this journey I am embarking on.
Tangents galore! Hope you enjoyed my middle of the night stream of consciousness. I certainly did. Until next time my friends,
The Reluctant Eternal Optimist 