Tuesday, April 14, 2009

It's a boy!

My second grandchild will be a boy due 9-11! It took just one second to determine this by ultrasound. A small part of me is disappointed that Shanna will never get the joy of dealing with a teenage girl but that's the mean part of me hoping for revenge. The boys will be close in age and hopefully will be good buddies. I will go to Boston is a few weeks after the Long Island wedding and see my precious grandson. Meanwhile the cute pink outfit Donna gave my theoretical granddaughter will wait. This will ensure J&J having boys also when they get around to having a family. Naomi hopefully will wait for years but one of her best friends will have one in June.

Soon I will graduate into the 'survivorship' phase of Cancerland. I've been told it isn't that much fun. Lingering side effects of the treatment plus lots of fatigue with no clear explanation and the expectation that you are now cured so you should have no excuse for not being your old self.
The biggest fear is that of metastasis: for those with TNBC, it happens sooner than later within the first 3 years after diagnosis. The sooner it happens, the more grave the situation. My onc doesn't believe in screening for this and just waits for symptoms. The screens miss alot and cause needless anxiety. What they do check for are local recurrences every 3 months. I was trying to get straight from the rad onc fellow whether recurrences are more common with TNBC. He had no idea. I have read that most recurrences are detected by the patient herself but since I couldn't ever feel my tumor despite its size and closeness to the skin and knowing where it was, I don't hold much hope that I could feel another tumor. If I do have a local recurrences, they would recommend a mastectomy as one can not do radiation to the same area twice. They also would recommend chemo. Going through that again would be so awful.

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