Done with 2018... onto 2019!

It's hard to believe it's the last day of 2018.  I can't ever remember a time when I've had such love-hate feelings about a particular year.  In other words, I have loved some of the things that have happened in 2018 and I've hated others.  It won't come as a shock that my most negative feelings about 2018 are related to my breast cancer diagnosis and treatment.  Even though my treatments aren't quite done yet, I'm over the tough part.  But I still hate that breast cancer was part of 2018 for my family.

However, there were so many amazing, positive things that came after my diagnosis and during my treatment.  I will never say that I'm glad that I got breast cancer, but I feel so incredibly grateful for the wonderful people in my life and the support that I received over the year.  My bestie got a tattoo with me.  My husband and kids took really good care of me.  I connected with some other cancer survivors who have since become friends.  Friends and family members sent gifts, meals, cards, and well wishes.  There was one other thing that happened during this time.  I realized how tough I am.  Maybe I knew it all along... but this journey made me look back and say, yes, I am a warrior!

On that positive note, some of the other positive things that happened in 2018 were:  I bought Six Rivers Property Management and I love being part of the amazing team of ladies; J.T. graduated from 8th grade; Abigail graduated from high school and started at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo; and Andy and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary in October.

I will leave you with my family's Christmas card... Happy New Year everyone!

December update

I didn’t realize it had been two months since I’d updated my journey here.  I finished radiation on October 30.  My skin handled it pretty well, but I was definitely glad to be done.  It took a couple weeks to get rid of the discomfort and pain.  Since that time, I’ve had every 3 week oncology doctor appointments followed by Herceptin and Perjeta infusions (a.k.a. chemo light).  I have to do 13 of them and should be done in early May 2019.

I ended up losing 30-40% of my hair- good thing I had a lot to begin with. But to most people, you probably can’t tell that I lost so much hair.  I’m so glad I did the cold caps.  I highly recommend it.  I’m getting plenty of regrowth so there’s little curly hairs coming in underneath.

Right now, as we speak, I’m getting Infusion #7 of 13... so over halfway done!