September is nearly over...

which means October is almost here.

Not sure how I feel about October this year and the inevitable onslaught of pink which has already infiltrated most of the universe. October, for the uninitiated, is the month where breast cancer is thrown in your face at just about every turn.

As a survivor, it's a constant reminder. Sometimes, that's just not a helpful thing when you are moving on as much as you can from breast cancer. Then again, with a sister now following closely on my heels on this path, I've already been pulled back into this world. I don't need a reminder. On the other hand, I think I am actually pretty darn well. September 12 passed and it did not occur to me that the day was anything other than my father's birthday... instead of being the second anniversary of living without my breasts and ovaries. Not too shabby.

What I do need is hope. My sister and I both have daughters. We need hope that maybe, just maybe, our girls will not walk this road. So, all this awareness and fundraising, in my eyes, is for them and little girls like them everywhere.

I do urge you to "Think Before You Pink" though. Look at where your money is going from the pink products you might buy. Some of these products around in October are just pink! No money from the sale is going anywhere other than someone's pockets. Look at how much... or how little is going to the cause. Some of the companies producing special pink products are donating pennies, or less, to the charitable organization they show on the package label. Your money is better spent giving directly to the specific organization in many cases. Of course, if I am buying a package of York Peppermint Patties, you'd better believe I'm buying the one with the pink wrappers that sends a few pennies to the Young Survival Coalition.

And, I am once again participating in the Race for the Cure early next month. I even have the whole weekend off for a change of pace. Please consider supporting our me or join our team, 2Sisters2Young4This in our race against time to find a way to truly PREVENT this from happening in the first place.

End of plug. :)

Reflections on 9/11

This morning, the radio show I sometimes listen to in the morning was inviting listeners to share to their 9/11 stories. Living where we do, the stories are mainly people who lost loved ones or people who were very close by, if not at the WTC.

My story starts with me sitting at this very same desk, typing on this keyboard (computer has since been replaced though). I wrote about it as a distraction on the morning before my "bilateral mastectomy + ooph + whatever other procedures we could cram in" day. Instead of reinventing the wheel, I will share that link once again.

http://melissaga.blogspot.com/2006/09/91101-where-were-you-when-you-heard.html

I've talked about defining moments before. This was one for our family. Thankfully, a positive one. I can't fathom how I could have gotten through the past 2 years of my life without my husband by my side.

Whale Watching in Alaska

There's no way around this. I have literally over 1000 photos to go through. I started printing some today so I have something to show when people say "Show me your Alaska pictures." I thought I would just print a handful, an assortment from each exciting thing we did or saw.
Yeah right. I've printed probably 150 today alone and there's still more. This is just not going to work. I've decided that I am going to put these in a traditional pocket photo album, something I have not used in over a decade!

I've made an executive decision. I am going to make a simple photo book (Artscow.com) or two or three for the entire trip. Don't worry. You'll still get to see the occassional layout. I am going to use the 12x12 Alaska scrapbook album Howie bought me on the trip to do a "my favorite photos/moments" from the trip sort of thing.

Sounds like a plan. A little less overwhelming anyway!

Here are a few more photos from Alaska. These are from our Wildlife Cruise aka whale watching. We saw 14 whales! Much more than they normally see at this time of year. The first two photos are of a whale cub. It came out of the water in a full breach, not once, not twice, but three times! Howie managed to catch it on his camera phone. I had trouble getting decent whale photos, but love the tail shot below.

We also saw many sea lions.... and many is an understatement. We sailed right by an island with literally hundreds of these guys.

We interrupt this program...

I started the blog to share my little cancer journey in a public fashion, mainly to make it easier for friends and family to keep up with what was happening. Since all I normally do these days is pop a tamoxifen tablet, there's not usually much to discuss.

Until Friday.

Didn't mean to scare you. There's nothing going on.

However, on Friday, I accompanied my sister to the chemo room where we both received treatments. She was given her second dose of adriamycin and cytoxan and I received my first ever dose of Zometa.

Zometa is a drug for osteoporosis. It's an IV drug, given once a year for this purpose. It is also used on a more frequent basis for treating women with metastatic disease to their bones. I do not have this. What is exciting to me is a small study presented at ASCO, one of the big oncology conferences, back in May. A study looked at 1800 women who were premenopausal at diagnosis, with hormone receptor positive tumors (just like me). The women where then randomized to treatment. Half were given traditional hormonal treatment (such as tamoxifen or an aromatase inhibitor) plus ovarian suppression (this is not traditional.. yet!), the other half received the same PLUS Zometa infusions every 6 months for 3 years. There was a 36% DECREASE in the recurrence rate for those who received Zometa in just the first 5 years of this study. Dr. Susan Love's Research Foundation has a nice discussion on the study here.

I found this study extremely intriguing. And promising. I recognize that 1800 is a small number and that 3 years of treatment and 2 more years of follow up is a short time. But, it is not often that we see prospective studies specifically looking at women who were thoroughly premenopausal at diagnosis. As I have had the ultimate in ovarian suppression, a bilateral oophorectomy (no more ovaries), this study pertains directly to me. When I saw my oncologist in August, I mentioned that I wanted to discuss the study. Much to my surprise, he agreed to give me the medication, figuring that at the worst, it would help strengthen my bones, a very common problem for post-menopausal women. At the best, it is another tool in our armory to crush the beast which is breast cancer.

So.. I had the Zometa. I've been fairly open here about my side effects with various drugs (even if it did take me a few months to talk about what Arimidex did to me!), so I thought I might share once again. I had my IV on Friday morning. Went to lunch with my sister afterwards, picked Rachel up from school and headed home. All was good with the world. I did what I was told and stayed very well hydrated. Thought this might just be a breeze. Friday was a hot and sticky night here. Not for me. After I went to bed, I was overcome by shaking chills. My teeth were literally chattering! Definitely the "flu-like" symptoms mentioned as one of the most common side effects. Made it difficult to sleep. It did alterate a bit with feeling flushed, but the chills definitely predominated! The next day, Sept 6, was my birthday. Unfortunately, it turned into one of those days that just disappears from the calendar. I did nothing all day. Generalized malaise and fatigue would be the medical descriptors. Loss of appetite too (so much for going out to dinner)! I did what I was told and took Tylenol, but it did not seem to make a difference. Fortunately, I woke up on Sept 7 feeling like myself, headed off to work a half day (12 hrs) and did just fine. We finished celebrating on Sunday and now it's like nothing ever happened.

From those who've taken it for mutliple times for other reasons, I hear it gets easier each time. I am going to believe that. :)

A little postscript about my sister:
She's at that very rotten part of the journey where you lose your hair. It started just before chemo on Friday. She had her hair cut very short on Saturday and is now wearing wigs, etc. She seems to be handling this part with remarkable aplomb. But of course.. she's my sister!

More random photos from our Alaskan cruise

Back to the Skagway tour. This is an actual shot of the White Pass train. This is not the highest narrow little bridge we passed over, just one where I was brave enough to stick my camera out and get a shot! I was expecting to perhaps be a little bored on this trip. It was after lunch and it was a second view of the same landscape we saw on the bus tour.. but not at all from the same view. Absolutely breathtaking. I only have a few hundred more photos from this part of the trip.

Now we are back in Juneau! We went first to the Mendenhall Glacier, which you can see behind Rachel. We did see bears on this trip and I do have an amazing close up of a cub from our bus tour, but not from hear. Too many bears spotted on the trail, so it was closed! We did see salmon swimming upstream. I can only imagine what a field day the bears must have at this stream.

The second half of this excursion was a wildlife cruise. We actually saw 14 whales on our cruise. My shots of the whales are pretty good, but Howie managed to get a shot of one whale in a full breach.. not once, but three times! We also saw 100s of sea otters, most just hanging out on this little island.

Photos, take 1

I had forgotten you can only post a handful of photos per blog post. I just tried to upload a scattering of photos to this one post, but I see that it's just not going to happen.

I took almost 1000 photos on this trip. Howie took a few hundred as well. It's impossible to share them all. Impossible to scrap them all! I will make at least one photobook, possibly a series of photobooks. I also plan to do a little traditional 12x12 paper scrapping but that album will just be my favorite photos/memories from the trip. Just too much to cover!!!

Yes, we went to Alaska, but these first photos are from Canada! LOL

The top 3 photos are from our last port day which was at Prince Rupert in British Columbia. Not a busy place. The downtown reminded me a bit of Troy, NY. A tiny city, on the depressed side of life.

As we got off the ship, a woman was handing out ads for an actual scrapbook store. Having no plans for the day, we decided to explore and find the store. So glad we did because it led us to a little street market fair that was fun to visit. The store is just a few months old and quite tiny. They did have a bunch of 12x12 and assorted sized local photos, so I bought one for my scrapbook. Their other items were definitely more expensive than back home. Loved the cow theming in Cow Bay, which was where the ship was docked. Some cute stores and a wonderful store for local artists. Other than that, we went to a drug store and bought Canadian candy- things that are difficult to find in the US like Smarties. Not the little round tart candies, but the ones that are more like M+Ms. :)

This last photo is from another day... our Skagway port day. There obviously will be little order to these next few posts.
Our excursion was a bus tour from Skagway into the Yukon to a kitchy but fun place called Caribou Crossing, along with a stop in Carcross. Plenty of other stops along the way. That was followed by a train ride from Frasier back to Skagway. Important lesson learned here! This excursion was booked through the cruiseline... so when we were more than an hour past all-aboard time, the ship was still waiting for us.