Im Too Sexy for this Cancer ....

Just a little update....Earlier this month, after a PET scan, it was determined that my breast cancer had already metasticized beyond the lymph nodes under my arm to 4 in my chest and one down behind my liver. It is not in any organs or bones at this point, but my lymph system is pretty well involved.

I began chemotherapy on Aug 4...have had 2 treatments, with no discomfort at all. I've felt great! I found out why yesterday. But let me back up for a minute....

When I began treatment with my oncologist, he said things like, "I can't promise that you'll get well" and "We'll try to extend your time and maintain quality of life." Now, maybe it's just me, but I read that as, "You've got Stage IV cancer and you need to get your act together and deal with it."

After some online research etc. I discovered that the oral and IV chemo I was taking was more or less a maintenance program... Not very aggressive at all. I'm thinking is that the best we can do?

I had a scheduled MD appointment yesterday, and I had decided to confront my oncologist with his non-existent sense of urgency. I am in the waiting stage for a second opinion at MD Anderson because I have felt like this guy had written me off....and my frustration level has reached epic proportions.

Anyway...I go to my appointment yesterday and am told that my MD is in Hawaii and that I'll be seeing one of the other partners in the practice. This turned out to be a big blessing. The new doc comes in and we talk a bit as he scans my chart---which by now looks like the Houston phone book. He asks how I'm doing with my chemo and I tell him that I've not had any discomfort at all...couldn't really tell that I'd had any. His response was, "Well, you're taking a minimal dosage, and these really aren't the first line drugs that we use to treat metastic disease." I was stunned. "This is what we might give an 85-year-old woman who wasn't able to take the more aggressive treatment...or maybe what we might use as a follow up after a more aggressive treatment plan," he continued.

He explained that there are two basic approaches that oncologists take in treatment of Stage IV metastic disease. The first, which my original MD was obviously taking, was to maintain, manage symptoms and try to preserve quality of life until the end The other is to aggressively attack the cancer with all available options. "The choice is the patient's," he said. The reality hit me---I was NEVER given a choice. I was simply told that this is how we're going to do this....period. I was relying on this MD to give me the best course of action given my circumstances.

It turns out that the new/substitute MD has a wife diagnosed about six months ago with basically the same set of variables that I do. She is on a very aggressive treatment plan, and three weeks ago a set of scans showed that her cancer was gone in some areas and vastly improved in others. This was a combination of drugs Cytoxin, Adriamycin, and Taxotere----the big guns. This was a no brainer as far as I was concerned ... So in the words of Meg Ryan, in that famous scene from When Harry Met Sally, "I'll have what SHE'S having!" New treatments start tomorrow morning.

Will it work? I don't have a clue. Will I have more side effects? Definitely. Is it the right thing for me to do? I believe so. If this cancer is so advanced that nothing can be done, then I'll accept that and deal with it. I simply don't believe that I'm there yet and I'm not going without a fight