Second opinion…

First of all… HI!!! I hope everyone is doing well and having a great summer! The kids and I have been BUSY… our weeks get filled up quickly with playdates, playgrounds, farms, pool time, berry picking, exploring, the lake and camping on the weekends! I feel SO fortunate to be able to spend the summer with these two humans! Gahhhh… I love them so much! I am also LOVING the fact that things are pretty much back to normal. I was in such a funk that past year (who wasn’t) and I’m just really grateful to be able to see friends and family again and give them all hugs. My family is like really big on hugging… at the end of a family party we all go around and hug one another…. but then we all start chatting again and 30 minutes pass…. which then makes it necessary to hug everyone all over again before we say our final goodbye hahahah! I love it ❤ I will never take a hug for granted EVER again!

Can you believe its almost August…. whhhhat? I took a look to see when my last blog post was… thinking it had been a month or so and it’s been 3 MONTHS! How did that happen?

LETS TALK BREAST CANCER!! ….here we go guys! I haven’t had a physical in a few years because my previous PCP left the practice. I established care with another APRN a few weeks ago and during my visit she asked about my plan going forward in regards to screening/scans. I explained to her that my team has suggested not doing any further imaging at this time and to just monitor for symptoms. I have been told this is pretty standard for a patient like me who has had a bilateral mastectomy. You could tell she wasn’t thrilled at all with this approach and felt like I could be doing more. I told her I have always thought it was CRAZY… I mean stage 3, grade 3 and being young when diagnosed are all things that put me at a much higher risk for reoccurrence than others (especially during these first 5 years). It doesn’t make any sense to me to just “wait and see”. Like… lets just see if it travels to your entire body and end up being stage 4 and terminally ill…. WHHHHAT?!! After making it clear I was also feeling the feels she had lol she suggested meeting with their breast cancer specialist for a second opinion. I was totally on board and anxious to get someone elses opinion!

I met with the specialist today and she was really nice and very informative! She made it clear that if I were her patient she would’ve done a baseline PET scan when I was first diagnosed. (This is a full body scan that detects cancer in the body). She said anyone stage 3 or higher is qualified for one. Well that’s awesome…. minus the fact my old oncologist never informed me of this (I guess that’s why he is considered my OLD oncologist lol). I yi yi! She said it might be a good idea to have one done now though even if its just for peace of mind. Ugggghhh…. peace of mind… something I have struggled with since day 1. My mind has been at war with myself for the past 3 years and I am exhausted. Constantly worrying about every ache or bump. I also still haven’t heard the words “you are cancer free” from any of my team members yet. I think I just made it up one day LOL …. pretty sure it was after my double mastectomy when they confirmed I had clear margins (which I was also told looked sketchy) but I was like that’s good enough… I will take that as I am cancer free now hahah! But I guess there is no possible way of knowing for sure unless I get this PET scan done right?? This has been weighing me down for the past 3 years now and I just don’t see it getting any better until I do something about it. This is my opportunity…. but I AM ALSO SO SCARED. Like I am already getting sweaty palms and heart palpitations thinking about it hahaha! But I think I made up my mind and know what I need to do. The specialist said I will need to reach out to my oncologist as she will be the one that will order it. I hear its VERY expensive and often not covered by insurance. I will need to figure that all that as well! I am going to take the rest of the week off and start phone calls next week 🙂

Thank you as always for riding this CRAZY journey with me! The love and support from my family, friends and the breast cancer community is UNREAL! So grateful for all of you!!!

KPOW