The Road So Far

Sometimes it feels as though I’ve had cancer all my life. Like I’ve been living with this diagnosis from the time I was born. Sometimes it feels like I was just told yesterday, and like I’m still adjusting to the new realities of my life. In reality, it hasn’t even been three months yet since I received the news. I guess there has just been that much activity.

Right now I’m still in somewhat of a holding pattern as far as the battle is concerned. I have received four rituxan treatments so far, which is part of the chemo cocktail but not a chemo treatment in and of itself, and one full chemo treatment, as well. We are still taking the chemo treatments one step at a time because they don’t want my blood levels to get to far off, which is a big concern for my doctors. I was anemic before we started chemo, and they’re worried if we do too much chemo, I might have to get a blood transfusion. And there is of course the ever-present goal of making sure the baby is ok!

As far as the progression of the cancer itself, we received the amazing news a few weeks ago that the rituxan treatments were able to shrink the mass by a full third! We and the doctors were all amazed by this, as they were simply hoping that the rituxan would simply hold the mass off and buy us more time before starting chemo. Now I’m excited to see just how much progress we can make against the cancer with the full chemo treatments!

I’ve been able to take myself off my oxygen a bit since the mass shrank. The mass was situated in my chest in such a way that it was pushing on my heart and lungs, making it difficult for me to breathe. Since it shrank I’m able to go quite a while without needing assistance to breathe, even when I’m up and moving around. My energy levels and weight have still been fluctuating quite a bit, and my eating is erratic at best from week to week, but every ultrasound we’ve done of the baby shows that she is growing at a perfect rate, so as long as that keeps up my doctors say we should be ok!

So that’s a bit of an update on me so far. I am currently 20 weeks pregnant, the baby is growing nicely and the cancer is shrinking nicely. We have so much to be thankful for on this journey, despite how terrifying it sometimes can seem. One of these days I will sit down and simply write a blog about how much we really do have to be thankful for, an itemized list of how blessed we’ve been even with a cancer diagnosis.