Yay Dr Internet!!

I’ve been having quite a lot of pain in my cancerous breast, which is weird and different than it has been to date. So I googled it (which is something I rarely do… word to the wise: never Google anything health related, because Dr Internet can kill you in five seconds flat.)

Well it turns out that many people can actually feel the tumours breaking apart because of the chemo! So, I have decided I shall latch onto that – my chemo is working, and I know so because I can feel it working. Take that cancer!

I saw an old friend today, who I haven’t seen since I was just diagnosed. First thing he asked is “so are we winning?” Honestly, that’s another very frustrating thing about this whole ride I’m on. Answer? I have no idea. Nobody knows. They don’t test you mid-treatment. The only sure fire cancer remover is to physically cut it out – but because I’m multi-focal, which means I have multiple cookie crumb types of tumours, and because I’m Her2-neu+, which means at a cellular level my cells are more easily recruited to the dark side, they have to blast me with an all over white wash of chemo to HOPEFULLY kill any cancer cells that may be in my body. Then they will blast me with targeted radiation to burn away anything in the vicinity that’s remaining. But whether either option works or not we will only know if it turns out that I live to a ripe old age of 90 without having to face the cancer demon again.

Needless to say, I have requested an MRI and cat scan for after chemo and before radiation just to satisfy my own curiosity. So we will have some idea as to whether the tumours that they already know about are smaller, or better, GONE. I will also have my ovaries checked at the same time, just because the last thing I want to find out after going through breast cancer is that it was actually an offshoot of ovarian cancer. There is a test called a PET scan that you can pay for that will do a full body scan, but it will only find tumours that are larger than 1 cm, and as I mentioned before, my issues are smaller, but multiple and possibly microscopic. So no point of that. The official plan is to just hit me with as much as possible and then guess and hope and pray it works, and stay diligent about getting regular checkups.

In the meantime, I’m very excited that at 10:16 at night when I can’t call my actual doctor and resorted to Dr Internet, I learned that it is possible to feel the chemo working. It’s either that or I’m experiencing nerve damage, which is also a possibility, as I have lost feeling in my fingertips and toes and tip of my tongue. But I prefer to go with door number one. I’ll go to bed happier that way. Which is a good thing.

Oh – if I haven’t said so lately, go get a mammogram. 🙂