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Home from post-chemo crash at Zen's, and way, waaaaaaaay behind on LJ so if I missed anything good point me there, 'cause there's no way I can catch up.
Only three more rounds of chemo to go, and I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, or maybe that's just the radiation beams headed my way. It's weird, I thought I'd be more excited about getting towards the end, but I'm actually getting more nervous. At least while I'm still getting chemo I'm doing something to stop it from coming back and/or spreading. But with the lack of targeted followup treatment for triple negative...once we're done here and with radiation it's all cross your fingers and hope. No safety net. And since the triple negative pattern of metastasis is for the risk to rise sharply in the first two years after initial treatment, peaking at three years, 'done with treatment' is less comforting than I'd like. The good, very good news, about the way triple negative behaves is that if I can make it through that three year peak my risk will drop like a stone and keep on dropping until five years out where I will actually reach a point where I will be less at risk than the general population (bilateral mastectomy, FTW!). Hormone positive breast cancers have a much less pronounced rise in post-treatment, but it keeps on rising for awhile and then levels off instead of dropping, so there is one advantage to trip neg. It may kill you faster, and more often, but if you make it through, you've made it.
So, yeah. Exhaling in about...three years. I suppose the one upside to getting cancer for my birthday (and, no, I'm never going to stop being pissed about that) is once I'm clear it gets to be a dual celebration of life and that's kinda cool.
Only three more rounds of chemo to go, and I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, or maybe that's just the radiation beams headed my way. It's weird, I thought I'd be more excited about getting towards the end, but I'm actually getting more nervous. At least while I'm still getting chemo I'm doing something to stop it from coming back and/or spreading. But with the lack of targeted followup treatment for triple negative...once we're done here and with radiation it's all cross your fingers and hope. No safety net. And since the triple negative pattern of metastasis is for the risk to rise sharply in the first two years after initial treatment, peaking at three years, 'done with treatment' is less comforting than I'd like. The good, very good news, about the way triple negative behaves is that if I can make it through that three year peak my risk will drop like a stone and keep on dropping until five years out where I will actually reach a point where I will be less at risk than the general population (bilateral mastectomy, FTW!). Hormone positive breast cancers have a much less pronounced rise in post-treatment, but it keeps on rising for awhile and then levels off instead of dropping, so there is one advantage to trip neg. It may kill you faster, and more often, but if you make it through, you've made it.
So, yeah. Exhaling in about...three years. I suppose the one upside to getting cancer for my birthday (and, no, I'm never going to stop being pissed about that) is once I'm clear it gets to be a dual celebration of life and that's kinda cool.