Update today 6/12 treatment #2

Hi all,
My brother came in yesterday and he's hanging out with me. I've been joking aroud that he's my house slave, but it's for a good cause...He'll be here until tomorrow afternoon.

I saw Dr. Luke today and he was pleased with my progress. I was excited to hear that each treatment should affect me in approximately the same way, which is contrary to what some other people had told me (that it gets worse). So, since I was feeling so much better than expected after the first treatment, I'm excited about what that means for being more functional than not.

We will initiate the BRCA testing next week, and the company actually facilitates acquiring the funding from the laboratory. It will take a few weeks to get the results back and we can discuss further indications then. I don't expect to test positive for the BRCA gene mutation becuase statistically, the majority of those who develop breast cancer are not due to hereditary factors at all.

Dr. Luke brought up an option with the round of chemo that will follow this one. He said that I can either do a dose-dense course with Taxol or do a regular dose course with Taxtiere. The side effects would have a much greater possibility in the former case (dose dense) - 40% possibility, while the latter has little chance of side effects. I'm going to opt for the latter-the once every three weeks with less side effects. Then I can be with people more :-)

I'm doing okay at present, and medication helps. I can't imagine what it would be like without the meds, really.


Just pray that God would use the chemo to shrink the tumors and kill the microscopic cells :-). That's what we want to happen :-)


Thank you all!
Julie