Big Changes

First, I cannot thank everyone for their endless love and support.  The emails and text messages have been blowing up my phone for the last 24 hours.  You are all so wonderful and make me feel so loved.  I appreciate it more than you know.  And even those who I do not even know, but have taken the time in their day to send me a message of hope, I am truly grateful.  Thank you.

There is so much to explain, but I'm going to keep it short and sweet for right now until I have the time to sit and really focus on the details.

I received news that my tumors are no longer responding to the chemo, so they have started me on a new drug.  Disappointing news, but they are still optimistic.  Health wise, nothing should really change - I will be able to tolerate the side effects just as well as I have been with my prior drug.  The big change is that it is no longer a pill, it's an IV treatment so it will now be administered at the hospital every 3 weeks.

I was doing okay with the news, but now that it's had time to settle it's starting to get to me.  Everything happened so fast yesterday.  I was on a chemo pill for the past 10 months - easy peasy.  I didn't really feel like a cancer patient.  But during treatment yesterday I was surrounded by cancer.  I was on the side of treatment with the patients who are on clinical trials or studies, like me.  Except they look a lot worse.  There were 5 other people in my treatment pod.  The woman next to my bed looked at me surprised, "You don't really have cancer do you?!"  I explained my story to her and the other women around me.  Next thing I knew everyone was taking turns sharing their stories.  The woman who looked ten times more ill than me also had more optimism than me... and the doctors have given her only one more year of life.  The woman across from me was in so much pain she could only cry - and she was on a heavy morphine drip.  Another woman was asking me about the scientific differences between our similar cancers.  I went into details about the different types of cancer cells, but spared her the information that her cancer is much more deadly with a high recurrence rate.  I did not belong there with those woman.  For starters, they were at least 20 years older than me.  They were bald.  They were over weight and just looked sick.  I felt guilty throwing my healthy looking, young body in their faces.  I'm going to suck it up and put on my best smile, but I am not looking forward to my next treatment.

The good news - my cough (that has only been getting worse) will hopefully clear up for Christmas.  They have decided that it is growing worse because the tumors in and around my lungs are growing.  My amazing resident told me her Christmas gift for me is a diminishing cough.  And I can't think of a better Christmas gift :).