The next phase of my treatment plan has begun. A few days ago I met with my new Radiation Oncologist, Dr. Jonathan Wan from Credit Valley Hospital (The Carlo Fidani Cancer Centre). Since Dr. Wan is new to my treatment team, it is very important to me that he keeps Dr. Bedard, my oncologist from Princess Margaret, in the loop with the treatment plan. As it turns out, Dr. Wan is totally onboard with this, and actually already knows Dr. Bedard both professionally and personally, so I’m quite pleased with how the treatment team is coming together.

I know this is going to sound odd, but I had a great appointment with Dr. Wan. I liked his personality right from the outset. He is super energetic, exudes a ton of positive energy, is the exact same age as me and is an avid runner to boot… 🙂

But… (there’s always a “but”, right?!)… Dr. Wan did share some new information, that well, quite frankly, could have better. Like keeping score in golf, when counting tumours, the goal is ALWAYS a lower number. It turns out that my post-surgical MRI identified that a couple of pesky tumours were hiding behind the big fucker that was removed during the operation. So my grand tally of tumours to be dealt with is sitting at one down, four to go.

However this news didn’t, and hasn’t, dampened my spirit for this battle. This doesn’t change the treatment plan. And despite this turn of events, I was still so stoked during my chat with Dr. Wan that I may have behaved in a slightly inappropriate and over-zealous fashion…

The doc had pulled up a chair directly in front of me, just about a foot away… and I may have gotten a little enthusiastic as I was explaining to him that despite the number now being four, we are still going to win… and I may have grabbed his knee and slapped his thigh as I welcomed him to my “army”… Hopefully he doesn’t report me for patient misconduct!

A few of you may recall an old TV show of this name… truth be told, I never watched it. I’m really squeamish and absolutely abhor horror flicks and the like (more on this later!). But as I was being wheeled down to the surgery, some similarities crossed my mind: an OR located in the basement of a hospital, some funny characters milling about, and the fact that my life was kind of a horror show at that moment! How was I going to survive this?

Well the answer is twofold:

• Be an ostrich
• Find the humour!

My surgery was scheduled for Tuesday, December 13, and the neurosurgeon came by my room for a chat the night before. He reiterated that we were scheduled for noon on Tuesday, and he mentioned again that the surgery was not an easy one – that it was in fact quite complicated. He then asked how much detail I was interested in. So I laid out my game plan:

• You’re going to put me to sleep
• While I’m asleep, you are going to do your thing
• Then I’m going to wake up, and I’ll do my thing; I don’t need to know anything more than that

He agreed, so we had a plan…(this is killing Chris S that there’s not a spreadsheet involved here… but sometimes you just gotta keep it simple…)

Fast forward to Tuesday morning…as I enter The Crypt!

As you can imagine, there are a number of people involved in this type of procedure. Early on I met Andrew, who was tasked with prepping me for the anesthesiologist. In order to do this, Andrew had to get me and my bed into a different position. Except he was having some trouble with this part. He fussed around my bed for a few minutes to no avail. He then enlisted the help of another team member, Calvin, for some assistance. The next three minutes are punctuated with “I think it’s locked”, “How do we unlock it?”, “There’s gotta be a combination of buttons…?”…

Well I just couldn’t let this opportunity go by… it was absolutely absurd! I finally just had to chime in.

“Guys… I gotta say, you really aren’t instilling a lot of confidence over here…”

They stop, they look at each other, they don’t say anything… so I carry on…

“Well, you can’t operate my Bed but in 20 minutes you’re going to be operating on my Head!”

Their faces were priceless! I was shaking with laughter, they were in shock and then realized it was all okay, and then I got to give them the good news: “By the way, this is going in my blog. You guys are going to be famous.”

So here you go Andrew and Calvin… your 15 seconds of fame!

These are words I really never wanted to say, but well here I am… going for Round 2. Let’s just say this month really didn’t go as planned!

To catch you up from my last post (November 2018) life’s been pretty good… I’ve travelled overseas to visit family, I’ve completed incredible half-marathons at Mount Rushmore and in the Colorado Rockies… I enrolled in an MBA program… I turned the Big 5-0 this year and somewhere along the way… my hair grew back!

So how did I get here?

I first started experiencing some unusual headaches in August. In early September I reached out to both Urgent Care at the Cleveland Clinic as well as my family doctor about this. Cleveland Clinic suggested a referral to a neurologist and my family doctor sent me for an x-ray of my neck. Both suggested physio and massage. Throughout October, the sharp, sudden onset headaches became more frequent and longer in duration. I booked another appointment with my family doctor.

In early November, some of the sudden headaches morphed into what I was calling an “episode”: my hearing was being impacted (sounded like I was in a fish bowl!), the head pain would start, and then I would start to feel dizzy and off-balance. While the headaches were daily, the episodes were more infrequent, but were occurring more than once a week; I reported this to my family doctor at an appointment in early November. By the first weekend of December, the “episodes” began to manifest multiple times a day. I booked another appointment with my family doctor, but I also spoke immediately with the original Nurse Practitioner from Urgent Care. It was this NP at the Cleveland Clinic who suggested I go to Emergency, in order get a scan, in order to expedite a neurology appointment. Thank God I followed her advice.

I went to the ER in Oakville, had a CT scan and basically fast-tracked right past a neurology appointment straight to neurosurgery! The CT scan revealed three tumours in my brain – a large one (4 cm in diameter) at the back of my brain, plus two smaller ones on the side. The ER followed up with an MRI and then transferred me that day to Trillium under the care of a neurosurgeon and his team to get ready for the operation. So in a nutshell, I went to ER on Dec 7th for a CT scan, and six days later had brain surgery. Never even went back home.

Up to the Minute: Well the length of this post kinda got away from me… but there are a lot of people who have been asking me questions so I wanted to fill in some blanks…and then some… LOL… Today is December 18th. My surgery was the afternoon of December 13th, and I’ve been back home since noon on December 15th (yep…that’s less than 48 hours after I got off the operating table!). I have care at home 24 hours a day and am well fed and looked after, but am not yet allowed to drink wine 😦

So the surgery was a complicated one, and thankfully it did go better than expected, but we still have to deal with those two other tumours. These will be treated with radiation, and the treatment plan is underway (I have a Radiation Oncology appointment on Friday at Credit Valley). As many of you know, I’m also a patient at Princess Margaret, and the oncology team there has been looped in on this new development. Any proposed treatment plan will be reviewed by both teams – this is important because this cancer is the same one that I had in 2017. Which is actually a good thing: I’ve beat this one once, and I will beat it again.

Today is the one-year anniversary of my surgery, and I am celebrating it with a two-week vacation in the U.K.! Okay, so maybe I was planning the vacation regardless, and it is just a coincidence that I am here for the anniversary, but nevertheless, I felt that today deserves mention 🙂

The milestone also made me consider that I really need to think about wrapping up this blogging endeavour. That said, I am pretty busy right now enjoying myself with a Grand Tour of England visiting family and friends, so as they say over on this side of the pond, “Cheerio” and I will catch up with the rest of you when I am back home!

Yep…you got it. Or in case you didn’t get it, I will no longer be needing the creepy Port-A-Cath! You may recall from some of my earliest posts that I wasn’t exactly thrilled to be getting a port in the first place. At the time, it was suggested that I make it my friend and give it a name. Well, I never really got THAT close to it…despite the fact that IT was quite close to me…or technically, inside of me. But somewhere over the last 14 months that it has been a part of my life, I did learn to appreciate it. It made all of my treatments at Princess Margaret a lot easier. So while I never really loved having it, I certainly am now an advocate for ports! And on this coming Tuesday, I get to say good-bye to it. Forever.

I will be heading to Toronto General on Tuesday afternoon for the surgery to remove the port. The procedure itself will take about an hour and I will be at the hospital for about 4 hours in total. At this point, it’s really no biggie 🙂  And as you can imagine, this is a surgery that I am really looking forward to!

Today was a big day. I crossed the proverbial finish line. Yep, that’s right. This morning I had my last treatment at Princess Margaret. In true social media fashion, I took a selfie in the chemo chair, and then took a photo of the very last infusion that, fingers crossed, I will ever have to have at the Chemo Center. Now all I have to deal with is that pesky port…stay tuned!

Today is my Cancer-versary. It was one year ago today that I was sitting in a consultation room at Princess Margaret hearing the words. I can hardly believe that a year has already gone by. I still can’t quite believe that this actually happened to me. Even now it still seems a little surreal.

As you all know, a lot has happened over the last 365 days. It has been quite the experience. Thankfully, I can embrace this anniversary as a day to celebrate because I received good news on Thursday. I had my first annual check-up at Princess Margaret, and the oncologist gave me the good report card that I was hoping for. Everything looked great on the recent mammogram and the oncologist has no concerns at this time!

I also had the good fortune this week to be able to attend two great concerts with two amazing friends. Erika and I caught the Luke Bryan concert on Thursday evening, and then Sheryl joined me for the Journey and Def Leppard concert last night. I cannot think of a better way to wrap up these last twelve months.

Three months have passed since my last blog post, but this is not because I haven’t thought about doing any writing. I am simply tired. Energy management has been a big challenge for me. As soon as I started to feel better, I started doing more activities, staying up a bit later at night…you know…doing FUN things! Well, unfortunately, when I do some of these fun activities, it takes me a long time to recover. A case in point – on a Tuesday evening I went to a concert. And on Friday, I was still tired from the late night, three nights before. Another thing that I’ve discovered is that Saturdays are my Most Tired Day, as after the work week, all of my energy is completely drained and I need a full day to recover. In an attempt to better manage my energy, I am trying to limit evening activities to one evening only during the week, as well as go to bed by 9 pm every night! I also try to keep my schedule to one activity per day on each of Saturday and Sunday. Sometimes I am successful with my energy management, and sometimes I fail 🙂

The other challenge that I have been dealing with in the last three months is that I contract colds and coughs very easily, and they can very quickly become quite severe. Of course, this is all part of the the fatigue that I am dealing with. The more tired I am, the more susceptible I am to catching a virus. I now have basically an entire pharmacy in my bathroom!

But enough of the boring stuff…on a more exciting note, I have a few medical milestones coming up. Last week I had my very first post-treatment mammogram, and while I have read the radiologist’s report (it looks good!), I will meet with my oncologist on May 31st to formally review the results. But I am fully expecting to get a good report card…as many of you know, I like my A-pluses!

I am also at the point where I am counting down the weeks to the last of the Herceptin treatments at Princess Margaret. To refresh your memory, Herceptin is used to treat metastatic breast cancer that is also HER2-positive (my cancer proved to be estrogen, progesterone and HER2 positive). I still go to the Chemo Centre for these infusions every three weeks, but there is zero downtime afterwards. I go to the hospital in the morning, get the infusion, and then go to work from there. I will say that I am pretty much the only person in the Chemo Centre who wears a suit while being treated! All jokes aside, the good news is that there are only four more of these infusions. The last one is scheduled for August 1st, which is a mere 9 weeks and 3 days away! And in case you forgot about the Port-a-Cath (still not my friend!), once the last treatment is done, I will be able to have the surgery to get it removed. This is a surgery that I am actually looking forward to 🙂

Red! What were you thinking?!?  Yes, I said red. That’s about the number of different shades of skin colour that I had simultaneously. This all occurred about a week after my radiation treatments ended. Part of this collage of colours was due to the blistering that occurred in my underarm. And yes, that was pretty uncomfortable…I had quite the skin care regimen during this time!

My six weeks of radiation treatments ended back on February 7th, and I do realize that it has been a long time since I published an update. But, I have a very good reason for this…radiation is very, very tiring! The main side effect of radiation, other than the skin changes, is fatigue from the treatment itself. Further to this, let me give you a rundown of my typical day: wake up, do a saline soak on my skin that is receiving the radiation, apply up to four different creams to skin, do physio exercises, get ready for work, go to work, leave work around 3:30 pm, go to Princess Margaret for radiation, go home, do a saline soak, apply creams, do physio, eat dinner, do a saline soak, apply creams, do physio, and then go to bed. Wake up the next morning and repeat. For six weeks. Needless to say, this was exhausting. And did I mention that I had to make my own saline solution? Every night I had to make a batch of sterile saline solution! So yes, I’ve been pretty tired!

Now that I am approaching the three week mark after radiation, I can happily report that my skin is healing nicely. There are still some sensitive areas, but no more blisters, no more saline soaks, and no more application of four different creams! I’m still working on recovering my energy, but at least my daily routine requires a lot less energy now, so that will help immensely 🙂

Since radiation is completed, I get to move forward with my maintenance treatments, which are all part of the plan to ensure that I am cured. As you may recall, I still go to Princess Margaret’s chemo centre every three weeks for an infusion of Herceptin, and this will continue until August of this year. I have now also started my 10 years of tablet therapy with a pill called Tamoxifen, which I take every day. This one concerned me a little as the information sheet says that “small amounts of alcohol may be tolerated”. So my oncologist and I had a chat to define “small”… and we’re good…I can still have wine with dinner, or a couple of beers while watching the Jays game!

The one surprise from my recent oncology appointment was that the Medical Oncologist wasn’t thrilled with the fact that the post-surgery pathology report indicated there was cancer in the lymph nodes that were removed. He had expected the chemo treatments to have eradicated all of the cancer. Because of this, I am at higher risk for recurrence, so the Oncologist has started me on an ovarian suppression drug to try and reduce the amount of estrogen produced by my body. I will be taking this drug for three to five years, and this drug does not come in a pill form. The drug is administered with a giant needle…as in I had my first injection over a week ago and I can still see the needle mark! I will have to have this injection once a month. For three to five years. My tummy is going to look like a pin cushion! But that’s okay. I will happily get this injection if it means that I never have to go through any of this again 🙂

 

As you know, I am now going through the radiation phase of my treatment. And I can happily report that I am past the half-way point! I am scheduled for 30 radiation sessions as part of my treatment, and I have 17 under my belt. The treatments themselves are pretty easy. It’s painless. I don’t feel or see anything. And I get to lie down during the whole process. It would be a nap-time for me, except I have to do that pesky breath-holding thing. For the curious, here’s a look at the machine that is used to apply the radiation.

The side effects most commonly associated with radiation are fatigue and skin changes or discolouration. The fatigue is really catching up with me. I have a lot less energy than I did even during chemo! Normal activities wear me out more easily so I’m keeping everything, such as household chores and social activities, to the bare minimum. Keep in mind that I am still in post-surgical rehab, so I have a lot of “must-do” activities, such as my physio exercises, which I have to do three times a day! I like to sleep a lot more now, and I have fully embraced the joy of multiple naps throughout the day. Of course, that only happens on weekends, since I’m still working on the weekdays 🙂

The side effects on my skin are starting to become quite apparent. The newest effect is some itchiness. And of course its a no-no to scratch the itch away, so I am now applying a cortisone cream to the irritated skin. The other fun thing is that the affected skin is changing colour. Most of the area looks like I have a mild sunburn, but some sections, like my underarm, are turning quite brown. I think I’m going to tell the technicians to turn me over…I’m done on this side!