Here we are...

It's been awhile... I just haven't felt like writing even though I know I should so that I could catch everyone up on where I am and how everything went. Well..I did it! Chemo is finished. March 5th was my last infusion and I finished up feeling strong. 6 months ago when it all started March 5th seemed like an eternity but the truth is it came fast. The first 2 months were hell. The AC was awful but I managed like any other person would do... you have no choice so you suck it up :) After the initial drug reaction and I was switched, my second set of chemo for the last 8 weeks wasn't terrible. I was exhausted but again you push through because you have to. Actually the day after my last chemo I went to the mother son dodgeball at Gavins school. It was such a blast except I almost got pelted in my port with a ball. At that point I decided to step to the sidelines.

We are working on settling back into "life after cancer" and I can see how it takes awhile to adjust. I am loving being home and getting back to being a Mom instead of racing from appointment to appointment. The other night the kids were sick and poor Jeff was exhausted from traveling so I was up with the kiddos and covered in urine, boogers and crying babies and all I could think was " thank you God for giving me more time to do this stuff, to wipe snot and check temperatures to be a Mom".

So here is where I am at medically. I will start a new medication on April 1st. Its called Tamoxifen. I will take that pill for the next 10 years. It has its own risks, like any medication, but it also decreases my risk for a recurrence. I am going into it with an open mind and a positive attitude.. it has seemed to serve me well through this detour so I might as well keep it going. I will also have my tissue expanders taken out on April 30th and my implants placed. Depending on what my surgeon thinks I may also have fat grafting done during the same surgery and no I do not need any donors... I have plenty myself :)  They say this surgery isn't near what the double mastectomy was so I am praying thats the truth. My only request was that I can be swimming with the kiddos sometime in June and my plastic surgeon said " yes" by mid June I should be floating  :)Sometime in 2016 I will also have my port removed. Per my drs order its best to keep it for 2 years... just in case... anyway, after that is removed I plan on having the finishing touches to my foobs... nipple tattoos. There is a guy in Maryland who is awesome and books out a minimum of 6 months in advance. I would love to have them done on my diagnosis date ... it would feel right to close this detour with the finishing touches.

So, as timing would have it my 35th birthday is this Sunday. Craziness? I remember celebrating my 21st like it was yesterday. Jeff planned a super sweet celebration. I really just want to focus on turning 35 and allow the cancer thing to sit in the background. Turning 35 is huge and celebrating will be fabulous. I have to say the other day someone posted about 34 being the best year and I quickly disagreed... selfishly though... and the more I thought about it I had to admit 34 was the year of learning so I can not say it was the worst year. It was definitely the most trying..physically and emotionally. I learned so much. I have gained an appreciation for my body that I never knew before.  I learned that the vows that Jeff and I made to each other almost 8 years ago were more than words. I saw his love in action.I learned that the love a Mother has for her child is deep and can be painful. I learned more  about friendship then ever. Friends don't bail when things are rough they come running.  There were so many people who helped us and friends far and near that would remember my chemo days and send me a text just to check in, say hello and let me know that they were thinking and praying for me. I can not begin to say thank you for taking a small minute to reach out...it truly brightened my day. I had super close friends who would answer their phones during a rough patch I would be having and just tell me it would be "ok". You don't realize the importance of that until you are on the other side. Or having a friend sit at my kitchen table and just let me bitch about things and cry a little about how this whole entire situation sucked...and not try to make it better but just listen...thank you. Thank you for welcoming my kids into your home on days when I was so tired I just couldn't keep it together. Thank you for dropping off food on nights when your own work schedule barely left time for your own family but you took the time to also think about mine.  Thank you, thank you, thank you!

So as we move forward I am excited to say we are making plans...camping is booked, beach vacation booked, summer concerts are booked and I am heading to a photography conference in April. I am so excited to get back behind the camera. I am not sure what I want to do anymore exactly with it but I know I mentally need it. I am brainstorming a breast cancer project and would love to work on it more next Fall when all 3 of my kiddos are in school.  We will see what happens with all of it but its exciting and scary at the same. As one of my favorite songs says:


We will watch and see and we will be amazed
If we just keep on believing the story is so far from over
And hold on to every promise God has made to us
We’ll see the glorious unfolding


So we live, love and laugh .... and believe and give thanks!



So anyways... enough about me... let's get the party started!
PS.. my hair is growing back and its blonde....

I know He hears me

Yesterday was hard. I cried ... a lot. When I was first diagnosed I received an email from a young lady who used to work with my Mother in law. She was also fighting breast cancer.. for a second time. Her type of cancer was extremely aggressive and so was her will to fight. We shared many emails over the last several months about cancer, kids, family and faith. She was a beautiful women inside and out. She received her wings and is at home with our Father as of Saturday morning. She leaves behind two children and a husband. Even though my encounters with her were only through email I was heart broken to hear about her passing. It is unfair and so devastating what this disease can do to families that are left behind.  I thought about her the majority of the day. I sat and read our emails. Laughing at the things that we joked about and crying over some of the conversations when I expressed my earlier fears to a stranger and she would encourage me to have faith. I will forever cherish those words she shared with me.

As yesterday progressed I ran some errands and headed to the store to pick up another juicer ... a girl can never have too many juicers. In all seriousness though I wanted another one for a different reason and as I was driving I was praying to God to just let me know he hears me...I was feeling alone and sad. Sometimes this entire situation still seems surreal to me but anyway I prayed and prayed. I kept thinking just let someone smile at me. I just wanted a genuine kind smile but it didn't happen. Truth be told while I was going down the escalator this other lady was going up and I kept thinking please just look at me just smile... no such luck in fact she did that weird I don't see you lack of eye contact thing that people do in an elevator. I took a deep breath and just kept praying for God to show me a sign yesterday. I just felt like I needed to receive a hug from him.

Anyway, after the store I stopped at the grocery store. I was almost finished when I realized I forgot tomatoes. I headed back to the tomato aisle and was standing there looking for what I needed when I heard a man say to me " excuse" and all I could think was " oh no, not again! not another hair comment while I am at the Jewel...I will lose my shit today if this happens again" but it didn't.
He proceeded " I don't mean to sound so forward but may I ask you if you are in treatment for cancer?" I told him "yes, I am currently in chemo for breast cancer but I am almost done."
He then  lifted his head to show me his scars. He told me I wouldn't recognize him if I saw a picture of him from last year. His eyes filled with tears as he told a little more about his journey. I couldn't help it I cried with him and I gave him a huge hug. He repeatedly told me to stay strong as he wiped tears from his face. I helped him find what he was looking for from his shopping list and told him he was what I needed right then. That God sent him to me. We said good bye and wished each other well. He went about his shopping and I stood in the aisle and cried a little more. I don't believe in things being coincidental I do believe that God hears us and delivers his comfort and messages at times when we least expect it. That mans tears also made me realize that all those tears I shed that day were normal. There are so many emotions you face when cancer comes into your life. Sometimes I feel alone because I carry so much with me. I know someone not living this can only handle hearing about it so much and so I chose to share a little bit with those closest to me and process the rest in prayer but seeing him cry affirmed that this journey rocks your soul and changes you forever.

That man in the Jewel will never truly know what he did for me yesterday. He gave me hope and he confirmed for me yet again that my prayers are heard and answered when the time is right.  Friends don't forget to pray .. He always hears you.

xoxo,
Jackie

Faith, Hope and Love

So things have been so quiet lately that there was nothing exciting to write about... I was just enjoying feeling good after my last chemo treatment and busy being in Mom mode. I also started getting all my photography stuff back in order and setting up my "studio space" aka : cleaning the basement. It honestly feels so good to do normal things: taking care of my babies, driving them to school, cooking dinner for my family, working out and just doing what I know other people view as daily mundane tasks ... all those things feel so good to me but like all good things they come to an end ..except my life has been running on two week increments. I explained it to Jeff as like knowing you are going to have the flu every two weeks and be down and out for 5 days. It gets so taxing both physically but even more so emotionally. I am considering myself fortunate though that from what my medical team tells me the worst of the medicine is now behind me.

This past Thursday I started a new medicine, Taxol. It was supposed to be the easier of the three medicines and by easier I mean no nausea. See here is the thing most people do not realize with chemo its not just losing your hair. Personally that has been the easy part for me. Its waking up one morning and noticing that your finger nails are turning black, and that the sore you thought was a canker sore is actually a mouth sore, the ache in your shin is actually from the shot that you inject yourself with to raise your white blood cell count so you don't end up with an infection and in the hospital. I don't write this stuff to get your pity but  to open peoples eyes to how serious this chemo business is. 

Anyhow, so at chemo this week I went thru the normal pre infusion blood work and physical exam all of which were normal. Jeff and I got settled in our chairs and chatting with my chemo lady friends. When my nurse came over to start my infusion after my dose of benadryl to help ward off any allergic reaction she warned me to let her know immediately of any breathing issues or pain in my back.  She started the drip and it goes so slowly that I sat back and kept talking to my friend next to me. As we were talking I felt myself take a weird breath..it felt like a triple breath..like I was slightly gasping. My friend next to me asked if I was "ok" I said I wasn't sure and she reminded me to tell my nurse. I said I wanted to wait a few minutes but before I could finish that sentence I asked Jeff to go across the room to get my nurse. As he walked across the room my kidneys began to feel as if they were twisting and cramping. I called across the room to Jeff to hurry up and get her. Within seconds every nurse in the room was at my chair, pulling the privacy curtain closed, pulling my drip cords off of me and before I knew it my medical oncologist was at my chair along with her nurse checking my blood pressure and monitoring my heart rate. The pain was intense and I was gripping the chair so hard..it reminded me of back labor pains. They called for morphine from the pharmacy and brought heating pads to my back. Within 10 minutes the pain had subsided and everything had calmed down. Once things were calm my doctor called off the morphine. I was then told that I would be eligible for my doctor considers a better less toxic chemo medicine called Abraxane. Here is what is crazy the only way to qualify for a better less toxic chemo is to suffer from some sort of reaction, a reaction that could have been fatal. I am thanking God for being by my side yesterday. Before I left for chemo yesterday I grabbed my Dads dog tags and threw them in my pocket ..every once in awhile when I feel like I need a little extra courage I'll take them with me. Anyway, as my doctor was walking away she mentioned having reactions to certain things and I couldn't help but tell her about my allergic reaction to anything less than 3 karats in my ears :)

So guys I am finally coming to see light at the end of this long tunnel.  March 5th will be a fabulous day.  I have three treatments left and I can not wait to hear that final drip beep and have my family there with me as I walk out of that hospital knowing and praying that for the next 5 years every time I walk back into that building it is only for a healthy check up. I have learned so much about myself, my family, friends and love because of all of this. This week my mailbox was flooded with thoughtful gifts and my weekly card from my dear friend who was also my awesome roommate when I lived in Georgia. I also received a beautiful anchor necklace from another new friend and survivor as a reminder that God is my anchor through this journey. I received an awesome t-shirt from a childhood friend that I will be proudly wearing soon. I also received a package from a friend of my husbands from growing up that had 3 awesome wigs, a heated blanket,  and an awesome shirt that I plan on wearing to one of my final chemos in honor of her beautiful Mom. All of these thoughtful gestures always leave me speechless and renew my strength in this battle that can be so wearing. So to all of you  "thank you" thank you for loving me and praying for me. 

xoxo,
Jackie