Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Round Two!
Emily has had a few weeks to recover from surgery and she starts chemo again on Thursday morning. She made the decision to switch to a new oncologist for this round and this guy is rumored to be the top oncologist in this area for breast cancer. He has recommended a chemo regimen of Gem-Carbo, which is considered the "gold standard" for triple negative cancer. She will have 6 treatments, one every two weeks. Supposedly, the side effects of this drug combination are not as bad and definitely not as toxic to her vital organs. Let's hope this round is less debilitating than the last!
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Team Emily
Kathryn and Jocelyn show their support for Aunt Emily by wearing their new Team Emily t-shirts. Special thanks to Kris and Cassie at Shiftwise for designing them!
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Blog Blackout
To start off, I’d like to apologize for the lack of blogging since Em’s surgery. I know many of you are curious about her well being and our up to the minute news source has been in a blackout. Or I’ve just been too busy to blog. Or lazy – maybe that’s the real reason….
Ahem – I digress. Again.
Things are finally looking up for our surgery patient. The first week was pretty horrible because of the pain AND the painkillers. They prescribed Oxycodone for her again, which works but has the unfortunate side effects of headaches and itchiness. To combat that, she was to take Benadryl. The combination of the two caused unbelievable drowsiness and coma-like sleep. She managed to wean herself off of the Oxy after less than a week, which is pretty impressive, considering the scope of her surgery. She was feeling better day by day until she popped an internal stitch last Tuesday. That caused her some excruciating pain for a couple of days and now she is a little hesitant to move too quickly. Realistically, that is the best course of action anyway.
Her pathology results came back with good news. All of the tissue they tested came back clear, with the exception of the new lump that caused all of this chaos. The doctor thinks it was a satellite tumor that was related to the original one and it looks like that was all there were.
She will be starting chemo again at the end of May, but it is still undetermined what type of chemo they will administer. Once again, the doctors are reviewing her case at Tumor Board to come up with the best course of treatment. Her oncologist will let her know soon what the consensus is for her next round of chemo. Emily has been researching the Triple Negative cancer online and it seems that the current treatment is the same as the one used for lung cancer. I had no idea that there were so many different types of chemotherapy!
That is all for now. I hope to have more information soon.
Ahem – I digress. Again.
Things are finally looking up for our surgery patient. The first week was pretty horrible because of the pain AND the painkillers. They prescribed Oxycodone for her again, which works but has the unfortunate side effects of headaches and itchiness. To combat that, she was to take Benadryl. The combination of the two caused unbelievable drowsiness and coma-like sleep. She managed to wean herself off of the Oxy after less than a week, which is pretty impressive, considering the scope of her surgery. She was feeling better day by day until she popped an internal stitch last Tuesday. That caused her some excruciating pain for a couple of days and now she is a little hesitant to move too quickly. Realistically, that is the best course of action anyway.
Her pathology results came back with good news. All of the tissue they tested came back clear, with the exception of the new lump that caused all of this chaos. The doctor thinks it was a satellite tumor that was related to the original one and it looks like that was all there were.
She will be starting chemo again at the end of May, but it is still undetermined what type of chemo they will administer. Once again, the doctors are reviewing her case at Tumor Board to come up with the best course of treatment. Her oncologist will let her know soon what the consensus is for her next round of chemo. Emily has been researching the Triple Negative cancer online and it seems that the current treatment is the same as the one used for lung cancer. I had no idea that there were so many different types of chemotherapy!
That is all for now. I hope to have more information soon.
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