Breast Cancer Chronicles: Finding the EASE Within Disease

The rain has arrived and with it brings my favorite time of year in LA. I love the rain, I love the weather, I love how the whole city basically shuts down because we all forgot how to function in actual weather. I love how the news stations talk non-stop about it with their various "storm watches," really pumping up the drama for what in New England would just be called rain. I LOVE it. (Really praying for no mud slides though!) There's something about the rain that changes the attitude of the city, it's like the rain comes in and washes all the soot away and for a day or two you get to see just how beautiful this place can actually be. With it's clear blue sky and it's 67 degrees in December, with it's snow capped mountains in the distance and miles of coast line right here in town. If you can't tell I love LA when it rains, and it's perfectly matching my current hibernation plan. I'm now one full round (2 infusions) into my new chemotherap...

This past week I had a PETscan to check in with how this current chemotherapy is working inside my body. This month would mark the 4th out of 6-9 months of this chemotherapy so we were getting our progress report. My tumor markers (for those that are unaware tumor markers are in your blood-they check them about once a month to notice if they're going up and down as that is usually indicative of what's happening inside your body) after the first month cut in HALF. From 215 to 110. I mean it was CRAZY, full blown confidence from my team of doctors and me that the chemo was doing it's job. But then the next month it stood still. One of the markers (I check 2 every time CA27.29 and my CEA) had gone down slightly while the larger one stayed put. We initially had confidence the larger one would soon follow suit as the tumor marker that did drop a little is generally considered the trend setter. So month 2 FULL CONFIDENCE, month 3 confident but disappointed, and now to month 4 and...