Round Five DONE…

…and it was a doozy!

I’m writing this on day 6 post FIFTH round of chemo and I made it through again! I will say- this round was not as easy as some others (but not as bad as round one or three!)

This time, my chemo date was my friend Lisa. Lisa and I met at a kinder play date before E started kinder and we realized our girls were just 6 days apart in age. That was it- our girls were fast best friends and Lisa has been a dear friend ever since.

As usual, chemo day itself went well. I did notice I was more tired when I got home than I had been in past rounds, but I also hadn’t slept great the two nights before. Other than the fatigue- everything went off without a hitch and I was all done by early afternoon.

What I wasn’t expecting, was that the fatigue would continue and would get worse. This round had me in bed watching Grey’s Anatomy (from the beginning) while napping on and off for two days.

I was just.so.damn.tired.

I also didn’t have much of an appetite so I stuck to lots of toast for a couple days.

I was worried about how I’d feel Monday so I had Justin stay home just-in-case and I am glad he did…mostly because I had an appointment for my heart ECHO that afternoon and though I was feeling much better- I felt like he should drive me there. By the evening I was starting to feel so.much.better and told Justin he could go ahead and go to work today (Wednesday.)

And great news- my ECHO was normal. In fact my heart performed even better than my pre-chemo ECHO, ironically. (I have to have an ECHO every 3 months while on infusions of the miracle drug Herceptin- the one that is kicking Carl’s ass- because it can cause heart issues in some people.)

One silver lining of sorts to feeling crappy- is that when you start to feel better you feel SO MUCH BETTER. Each time I feel like it “wasn’t that bad” and yet when I start to feel better I realize HOW GOOD “better” really feels. I love being on the “other side” of the crappy and knowing that it only gets better from here on out…until of course, I have to do it all over again….

But I only have to do this ONE MORE TIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Only ONE MORE round to go and I will be DONE with TCHP chemo!

I may or may not be pretty damn excited to be done with this phase.

I have been asked a lot lately what happens next. Well, 3 weeks after my last round, I have a breast MRI to check out the progress of my chemo. A week or two after that MRI I will be having breast surgery and I think around 4-6 weeks after that I will have radiation.

And during all of that- I will be continuing to have infusions of targeted therapy through the year mark of when I started (December).

To answer the many questions about the next phases: I don’t know what kind of surgery yet and I don’t know how much radiation yet. I also am not going to know 100% which targeted therapy I will get until after my MRI/surgery. I am hoping it will be two medications I currently receive as I know my body tolerates them well. So fingers crossed I have had a really strong response to my current chemo.

That is about it for now. Thank you to all of you for the thoughts, prayers, good vibes, texts, messages, cards, and continued support. We appreciate it more than you’ll ever know.