You Had to Know I Have a Thankful Speech This Year!!

I will keep it short and sweet~ I think it goes without saying (much) that I am very thankful for the way God took care of me this year, especially since my diagnosis of stage II breast cancer in mid-June. I have kept a good attitude, but there are times when it was OH SO HARD to not worry about future doctor appointments, treatments, and thinking about possibly leaving this earth far earlier than I had ever imagined.

Some of my short prayers included:
"God, if my work here is done, take me. If not, please get me through this."
"God, please have mercy on me~ don't let me have to do chemo (I know so many other of your children go through it, but please have mercy on me)."
"God, I don't want to take medicine, but since you spared me from radiation and chemo, it's the least I can do. Just give my body what is good from it and get rid of the rest!"
"God, thank you so much for taking care of me!"

In addition, this experience has helped me feel more deeply the pain others are going through with their medical issues. It doesn't have to be cancer, just anything.

I am so thankful for all the prayers, cards, texts, e-mails, Bible verses, and calls of people just reaching out to me in my time of need. It is so hard to express the gratitude I have. If God lays on your heart to reach out to someone, don't ignore it. It will mean the world to them.  There was a period of time between my diagnosis in June and my masectomy on Oct. 2, where I received at least one text, card, e-mail or phone call EVERY DAY~ like God had it all planned out to give me a bit of encouragement each day to get me through. It was truly amazing. Some days I woke up saying, "I wonder who I will hear from today?"~ it was GREAT!

God is Building My Empathy Resume

Well, not many people can say they have had 4 surgeries in 6 months. Sounds like enough to start a new club!  This past week was pretty stressful. First I had a reaction to a new antibiotic, and that was not a fun experience, then I finally got started on my tamoxifen medicine after letting it sit on my bathroom counter for a week. Then, mid week I noticed my surgery scars were not looking so good. I had an appointment with my plastic surgeon scheduled on Friday.

Thursday night around 1:15 I woke up feeling warm all over and couldn't really go back to sleep until around 4. Friday morning I noticed the blister that was on my skin was seeping so I put a gauze on it, stalked the school nurse for awhile, and prayed I could make it until my 11:45 appointment without anything really bad happening. I had a feeling I shouldn't go alone, so I texted my friend Emily and asked her if she could go with me. She picked me up and when we got to the Dr. office, I had to wait about 2 hours because he was behind and it was SO hot in the room I thought I was going to faint.

Finally Dr. Hughes came in and took a look at me. He was really quiet, then he said, "Well, what we've got here is a (insert some medical term I didn't understand), i.e. an exposed tissue expander." Pause. "The best thing to do is take it out and let you heal." Pause. "We are going to send you to surgery." Me: "Do I need to schedule that?" Doc: "No, Shae will schedule it and we will do it today." Me: "Oh."  Dr. Hughes said it happens to some people and I didn't do anything wrong. The surgeon in October did a good job scraping all the cancer out, and that is what is important. My skin didn't have enough support to be able to withstand a blister or anything like that going wrong.

From there they sent me over to the hospital to get ready for a 4:30 surgery. It took about an hour and I was able to come home around 7. Brian came over from work and Emily stayed with me until they took me to surgery.

To be honest, it feels pretty good not to have that expander in there. I will take a few months and think about what I want to do. If  they have to take skin from somewhere else to do it again, I will definitely choose the prosthetic route. I will try one for a few months and see how I like it anyway.

I will keep you updated! Thank you for keeping up with me and caring and praying and being there for me.

A Good Report- Finally!

Hello! It has been awhile since I posted. I am happy to say that my oncotype report came back very positive. Out of a score of 100, I got a 10. That means I am low risk for the cancer returning and they also tested the tissue to see how it would react to chemotherapy and it came back that my cancer would not benefit from chemotherapy.  I am so thankful for continued research in the area of breast cancer! I know for sure that God has been merciful to me.

In the area of reconstruction, I have a tissue expander in, and soon I will be going every few weeks for them to expand it with saline, then in several months I will have a two hour surgery to replace it with an implant. There are several different ways to do reconstruction, but I chose what I think will be the simplest and easiest for me.

Points of prayer: That my final drain will come out this week. It has been four weeks! The plastic surgeon likes for the drain to be giving out 30ml or less of fluid for 3 days in a row, but I have been consistently at 45 ml for a few weeks. I think maybe my body is just different :)  He said there is a time limit as to how long they keep it in, no matter what. There are no signs of infection (as of today), so hopefully Friday when I go back he will take it out and my body will just absorb any extra fluid.

One other thing on my mind is starting the tamoxafin medication. I am going to be starting it this week and I know that it is useful and helpful to pretty much every woman who gets cancer pre-menopausal. I just have always had a fear of taking medicine (everyone has some sort of fear, right?). I am confident that I will be OK, and just have to get past my humanness. God has brought me this far, I don't think He is just going to leave me alone now! I feel I am in good medical hands and believe that they will help me make the best decisions for my health.

I will continue to blog to give updates on reconstruction, further surgery or whatever may be on my mind. I have read that journaling is good therapy!