One Year Later

Today marks a year since I got the call, confirming my suspicions of breast cancer.  With the help of an amazing team of doctors, I threw everything I could at the beast, and I feel I beat it.  This week's mammogram on the remaining breast came out "all clear," which was an amazing relief.  They tested 10 lymph nodes during my mastectomy, and three of them were positive for those pesky cancer cells.

When it's in your lymph nodes, it is easily carried to other parts of your body.  This is the annoying thing that keeps me on my guard.  Knowing that, even though chemotherapy ended six months ago and radiation ended four months ago, I had a clear mammogram.  That is comforting.

I've been pulled off of Tamoxifen, the hormone suppressing drug, because of my swelling and other symptoms.  An echo-cardiogram has been ordered for next Friday morning to make sure my heart hasn't been damaged.  I had one before my surgery that was good, so we have a baseline for comparison.  Worrying won't help, so I'll just wait.

All of my kids will be together on Wednesday evening, and I'm really looking forward to that.  It's a black-out week at work, so I couldn't take any time off, but Kevin was able to.  We'll try to do some fun stuff with them.  I'm glad there is something positive and fun for me to focus my attention on.  The bottom line is, I've survived a horrible year.  And I'm stronger for it.

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