Darn blogs.  Have to remember to hit save.  Ugh.  Anyway.

January 11- Confirmation.  Now to tell family and friends, but how?  I have cancer, pass the salt?  Not so easy.  Especially when you don't have all the answers they want.  To date all we really know is I have IBC, and we know very little about that.  The nurse practionioner called me at work and confirmed, then said I needed to pick a surgeon and a radiologist.  I was assigned to my oncologist, Dr. Chitumbar.  If I had a fingernail of his smarts.....

Bob has handled texts, emails and phone calls up to this point.  Thankfully.  Right now the last thing I want to be doing is answering questions.  What kind, what stage, what are they going to do, how can this happen, how did you know, when did you know, and the best, what's the prognosis.  All legitimate questions, not something I want to think about.  My job, to tell my sister and brother I have the same disease that took our mother at 64, not looking forward to that.

Meeting the doc was interesting as he layed out the plan, that I can do.  Tell me what I have to do, show me the plan, and I can work with that.  So he did. The plan consists of chemo.  It could be easy chemo first or not so easy chemo first.  Waiting on the blood tests to come back to see if I am HER2 positive or negative, another twist.  Since I continue to be unique, my test comes back that I am a triple negative breast cancer, only 10 to 20% Link of cancers are TNBC.  Yep, that's me, unique.  Hard chemo first and no boosters as no estrogen, progesteron, or HER2 receptors for me.

Next blood draw, since I'm a triple negative, genetics.  While my mother had IBC, apparently the triple neg really is the interest for genetics to have me tested.  Vials pulled, and sent to California.  Luckily as well, my insurance company is a sponsor of the genetics testing.  In a brief conversation with the genetics counselor she tells us 3 years ago the were only testing 3 genes, they are now up to 17, and growing.  Science is amazing.  This one makes me nervous, and it will take the longest.  Oh well, on to more testing.

Next steps were an echocardiogram, a CT scan a bone scan, and a brain scan to see if there was any spread.  I now know where all my arthritis is located, I have a brain, and a strong heart.  Two thumbs up.  After several days of waiting, finally some good news, NO spread!  I am Stage 3 Inflammatory Breast Cancer.  Stage 3 because it's IBC, it's an automatic stage 3, not higher because we caught it before it spread.  I finally have something definitive to tell people.  He tells me the type of chemo I will take, the amount of weeks, and how we work after.  I'm ready.  Monday, January 18th,  I get my port.  Lets kill this beast.

This little devise will be my friend for some time to come.  It goes in with a quick day surgery, and is now under my skin until the doc says we are done.  When I report for my chemo days, they draw blood from it and put the chemo directly in it.  As long as things work properly, we are friends.  ;-)

Only the first punch hurts......  :)

Time to tell people, pass the salt.

Its been 20 days since I noticed the cancer.