Quick Update

Hi Team,

Had some Dr appointments today - nothing too surprising, but good news overall. First I met with Dr. Liu (oncologist) and the overall consensus is we are going to continue the same as this past time. He was quite pleased (as am I) at our results, so far the original tumor that I had about 4cmx5cm has shrunk significantly as a result of the chemo, to the point where this time it was hard for both of us to tell how big the tumor is anymore. He did an "official" measurement at about 1.5cmx1.5cm this time. Overall the side effects, while not pleasant, were manageable this time around, no major trips to the hospital or pain the had me laid out in bed for days. So hopefully this next time around will go similarly.

I had blood drawn from my port for the first time, I like that I don't have to get stuck with a needle to get blood drawn - there is now a round peice of metal with a little round silicone pad just under my skin that has a tube/cathater connecting into my jugular vein. It stays in all the time and all they have to do to draw blood or give me fluids or chemo intraveniously is insert a special needle into the silicone pad. It just looks like a bump under my skin normally, you can tell it's there but just looks like a bump about the size of a nickel and of course a scab still healing from the surgery when they installed it. The nice thing is that they don't have to dig in my arm with a needle anymore or damage any veins in the process of all the drugs I have to get via IV.

I also met with my surgeon Dr. Langer today - she was also very pleased at the progress and thinks I'll have a full reaction to the chemo, meaning that by the time I am done with chemo there may not be any more cancerous tissue in my breast. That is a very good sign for my prognosis and doesn't always happen, so good news! Monika went with me and we had a nice chat w/ Dr. Langer also about traveling and how much we all value it - she is traveling to eastern Europe at the end of August and sounds like a very cool trip. Makes me want to start planning my next trip abroad. We also dicussed how interesting it is that the American culture is really the only one that doesn't commonly promote traveling abroad as an easy thing to do an important part of learning about other cultures and broadening horizons. Perhaps because we're a large country so far away from other parts of the world, but I'm hoping that pattern will change eventually. I love traveling and I think it's very important to understand how other parts of the world live. Of course you have to be the change you want to see in the world so I'll do my best :) Anyhow, back to the subject at hand, I will check in with her again at the end of July and tentatively plan my surgery for the beginning of September, and we'll decide for sure what type of surgery and reconstruction we'll do at that point. We'll also do another MRI to see if we can find any cancerous tissue left.

Best,
Amy