SUE'S ESCAPE FROM CANCERLAND: 65th anniversary

Saturday, June 14, 2014

65th anniversary

My parents shortly before their wedding

my mom showing off her figure

Well it would have been their 65th anniversary had they been alive. A beautiful day. Cool in the morning for my run and bike (making up for the sloth earlier in the week). More weeding and planting. And a new manicure after showing off my unkempt nails on the World Wide Web using my fingernail as a scale for a tiny toad.

All sparkly and coral pink

1 comment:

Elephant's Child said...: Love the photos of your parents. Your mama was a stunner.
Your nails are pretty special too. I don't think a manicure would last five minutes on me at the moment. Much garden grubbing.; June 14, 2014 at 5:11 PM

About me

I am a mother of 3, wife of 1, and grandmother of 6. For years, I had been a medicinal chemist. Not long after I was retired early, I found myself with triple negative breast cancer. My struggles with it are in this blog along with the joys and trials of being a mother and grandmother. I love to be physically active, travel, read, and garden. Although my degrees are in chemistry and cellular biology not medicine, I keep up with the medical literature and report herein watching closely for good news against this deadly disease. As time goes on, my stay in Cancerland has become more a bad memory than a reality. This blog has since morphed into a photo blog in which I try to capture moments of beauty in my life.

TIMELINE

9-10-08: 1.6 cm tumor discovered by routine mammogram confirmed by ultrasound

9-21-08: Biopsy confirming Grade 3, triple negative invasive breast cancer

10-7-08: First surgery and sentinel node biopsy.

10-9-08: Tumor had grown to 3 cm plus an additional tumor was found. Poor margins but the 3 sentinel nodes were negative

10-16-08: Follow-up mammograms: lots of microcalcifications that could be DCIS

10-29-08: Second surgery removing 3x the tissue as the first: Good news: no sign of cancer in any of it.

12-2-08: First dose dense treatment with Adriamycin and Cytoxan followed by Neulasta the next day

12-16-08: Second dose

12-19-08: Hair began falling out. In 2 days I would be completely bald.

12-30-08: Third dose

1-13-09: Fourth dose

1-27-09: First of 4 doses of Taxol

3-10-09: Last dose of Taxol

3-31-09: First of 16 radiation treatments (so-called hypofractionated Canadian study)

4-21-09: Last radiation treatment

Early May: All eyelashes and eyebrows suddenly fall out but see evidence of stubble on head

Mid July: Have an inch of curly salt-pepper hair vs straight blondish-white of before. Officially retire the wig.

Saturday, June 14, 2014

65th anniversary

1 comment:

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