Aunt Debbie's Breast Cancer Journey

Before I begin this story of my journey through my experience with breast cancer, I have to say that without the love and support from my wonderful friends and family it would have been a lot harder journey. All of their love and caring helped to keep my attitude positive. One of my biggest inspirations to me was my cousin’s husband who had gone through years of pain and surgeries from his Crohn’s disease and I thought of those years and only remembered him always being so positive and smiling. Another great inspiration has been the people that I have met at the infusion center. A lot of them are going through a much rougher time than I am and they are all so supportive and encouraging. I think to myself that I’m lucky to have such a good prognosis and I know everything will be okay for me and I need to try and stay positive. The chemo nurses and my Oncologist are the greatest and have helped keep me going. When I first learned of my prognosis and treatments, family members had told me that I’m a strong person and I can get through this. The funny thing is, I’ve never thought as myself as a strong person. I have had days when I was really down and have had some pity parties for myself and that’s to be expected, but I found that you just need to pull up your bootstraps and do what you have to do.

It was late on a Saturday evening in March of 2008 and I had my PJs on and was watching a movie on TV. I was eating a snack and some of the crumbs fell down inside my PJs and when I was brushing these crumbs off my right breast I discovered a lump. On Monday morning I called my gynecologist office and they had me come in for an exam. I was then scheduled to go have a mammogram and an ultra sound. After the ultra sound the breast clinic scheduled a biopsy in a couple of days. My gynecologist office called on Monday afternoon and asked if I could come to the office at 4:30 that afternoon to discuss the biopsy results. When I expressed concern, I had been told that this was normal procedure. As you can imagine I was pretty darn upset when she told me I had breast cancer. The next couple of days were the most emotional trying to come to grips with the big “C” diagnostics. I was next scheduled to see a surgeon and he explained that I would have a lumpectomy and since I was in the early stages my prognosis was very good and that breast cancer today, if caught in the early stages, is not like it was years ago. I then met with an Oncologist and Radiologist and it was explained to me that they wouldn’t know until after the surgery what my treatment would be. After that I was scheduled for a breast MRI, chest x-ray, and PETScan. When the results came back from the MRI and PETScan, it looked like I had another spot lower on the same breast but smaller and deeper. The biopsy on this spot did not come back with good enough information so they decided in surgery to remove this 2nd lump first, freeze it, and then test it to see if it was cancer. If the tests during surgery showed that it was cancer I had agreed with the surgeon for him to do the mastectomy, and if it wasn’t then I was to have a double lumpectomy. The tests they did at the time of surgery showed that this was not cancer, so he performed the double lumpectomy. When I went in for the first surgery I was in the beginning of stage 2 of invasive cancer on the lump I had found.

A couple of weeks after this surgery I received a phone call from the Oncologist and was informed that after further testing, the second lump was diagnosed as DCIS or Ductal Carcinoma In Situ which is considered pre-cancer. It was explained to me that this pre-cancer can start growing at any time and is not easily detected so you would always be wondering if it was later developing into invasive cancer or growing. The “team” which included my Oncologist, surgeon and other doctors met and discussed my case and they recommended that I have a mastectomy. So after discussions with the Oncologist and the surgeon, I made the decision to go back in and have the mastectomy.

About a month after the mastectomy I started with my first round of chemo which was 4 treatments, one every two weeks, of Adriamycin. As most of you know, the worst side effects of this treatment are losing your hair, horrible nausea, and fatigue. When my hair started falling out I was pretty upset. I went to my hairdresser because she offered to be the one to shave my head when it was time and she really put this hair loss into prospective for me when she said “It’s only hair and it will grow back”. Boy, I thought she is so totally right and after that I was totally fine with losing my hair. The next round of chemo was a weekly dose of Taxol and Herceptin for 12 weeks. I was only getting 1/3 dose of each every week and shouldn’t have many side effects, but I seemed to have a few. My feet and hands were numb and tingling a lot, I was still getting nauseas, especially in the mornings or when I was tired, and the fatigue was still pretty bad. After about 6 or 7 Taxol treatments, my feet and ankles were swelling a lot. They took me off the treatments for a couple of weeks and put me on a diuretic to help reduce the swelling. I had a couple more treatments and the swelling was not getting any better and since this can be a side effect of Taxol, the Oncologist decided to stop the treatments in early October. I am still having some swelling in my feet and ankles and still cannot wear enclosed shoes. I started getting just the Herceptin treatments in October and will have them every 3 weeks for a year. Thank goodness …there have been no side effects from the Herceptin.

My hair is growing back and I’m feeling pretty darn good. I hope to start my breast reconstructive surgery in September. Wearing a bra now is not very comfortable at all. It had to be a man that invented the breast prosthesis, because I’m sure that a woman would not have made it so heavy. Since I’m having the reconstructive surgery, there is a lot of loose, folded skin and wearing this darn thing is very uncomfortable. Also my bra strap on the left hand side irritates the heck out of my port. My husband used to laugh when I was still wearing my wig because I would walk in the house after work and immediately remove the wig and take off my bra with a big sigh of relief. So for now, I’m having my Herceptin treatments every 3 weeks and a MUGA Scan every 3 months to check my heart, as the Herceptin can damage your heart. So far everything is looking very good for me and I strive to keep a positive outlook.
It seems like I’ve been through a lot this past year, but really there are so many people out there that are terminal and in so much pain every day of their life. I feel like I’m one of the lucky ones.

Thank you everyone for being there for me when I needed you the most. I feel so honored that my niece, Tiana, is walking in the 3-day cure race in my honor. Please support her.

Thank you,
Debbie Hendrickson