So yesterday I was blessed to have another patient who is more a brother and friend than my dental patient. David S. is a pillar of faith, a humble and gentle, holy man that illuminates and radiates God's goodness. He shared and prayed with me and I am thankful that my Lord puts people in my life like him. David, if you read this blog...I'd love to have you reply with all those awesome one liners that you said to me...too many to remember, but too good to forget! And thank you for your transparency with your own cancer and struggle. You gave me hope and strength and knowledge.
Then last night I got to have a sleep over with my sweet friend, Liz Pieniasek. This friendship, this deep kindred friendship...it's a bond that you can't just create without suffering and deep affection for each other and it's all because of our great Father who knitted our lives together 5 years ago! We had a date at Ollie's, went back to her house and she made me dinner...that Vegemix blender-thingy is a beast! I had berries, kale, spinach, protein powder, banana and fresh mint leaves blended into organic goodness. I got the joy of sleeping with her little lady, Lily Mae. I fell asleep holding her hand and praying over her as she struggles with the loss of her daddy.
I wonder where I will be next week at this time. I could be in surgery having my boob lobbed off. I could be pumped with chemotherapeutic drugs. I could be getting ready to go to Rockford to see my family for Father's Day. I could be working. So many options.
Tonight I have my a book study about living with my eyes focused on Jesus and living on purpose for Him. I decided to lead a young group of very special ladies in my life through this book, Rare, A Young Woman Who Fears The Lord, by Yvonne Hanson when God put it on my heart to do this. This study has been very disrupted with Jordan's death and my diagnosis and will continue to be, but I won't be stopped! Somehow, I plan on continuing to lead them, guide them, teach them, and learn from them. Somehow, I will complete what God put on my heart to begin.
Tomorrow will be another day that will be full of insane emotions. I have: 2 doctor appointments (orthopedic doc to discuss my 2nd MRI & gynecologist to ask a few questions about some unknowns), Jordan Pieniasek's placement at the cemetery with his closest friends, family, children, and widow followed by a fun night of John Wonderly grilling out an amazing dinner for a couple at church that we are just getting to know. If this is God's way of distracting me from my cancer diagnosis...it's working!
Shout out to my Cuz, David Richardson! You are, simply put, one of my favorite people on planet earth. I loved your voicemail. My back hurts, my shoulder hurts, but my boob feels fine! Glad Larry took option A vs option B and got outta town!
OK....the Oncotype results. I will talk to 2 different medical oncologists, Dr. Darnell and Dr. Cody, on Monday, June 13th to discuss how these results affect my treatment and get a final plan from a chemotherapy perspective. However, I learned that the results are in so I asked Dr. Manders, my breast surgeon, to give me the results. Her nurse, Sue, answered many questions and was helpful and explained it to me. So oncotype scores are from 0-100. The higher the number, the better my cells will respond to chemotherapy. It evidently determines what percent my body would have a recurrence of breast cancer in the next 5 years. So my score is a 29. This is on the high end of intermediate as 0-18 is low, 18-31 is intermediate, and 31 and above is high chance of recurrence within 5 years. Therefore, I have a 17% chance of recurrence of cancer within 5 years with Tomaxafin or another estrogen binding drug and a 14% chance of recurrence of cancer within 5 years with Tomaxafin AND chemotherapy. This score is factored in with the fact that I have positive lymph nodes. Sue said she cannot state what the medical oncologist will recommend, but since I have positive nodes, I may be more likely to have chemo recommended. On the other hand, if I only have Tomaxafin, my symptoms won't be so severe as chemo and my white blood cells won't be affected like when taking chemo, so if that's the case, I may still work after healing from surgery. All that said, and I still don't know where I stand on the whole chemo thing until Monday.
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