Chemo Time...

You may recall from my last post that my next step was to decide whether or not to have chemotherapy.

I think it is fair to say, that my lack of posts over the past couple of weeks is a reflection of the fact that I have been completely immobilized by fear and indecision on this one. This has hands down been the hardest decision I have ever had to make in my life.

Option 1)
Do 4 rounds of chemotherapy over 12 weeks - endure a pretty crappy couple of months and hope that I am not one of the unlucky few that ends up with a serious complication from the toxic treatment. Going forward however, this option would give me more confidence that I have done everything possible to kick this cancer to the curb....and IF it ever does come back, then I wouldn't be able to look back and wonder whether I should have done things differently......

Option 2)
The less aggressive option of the two which would entail monthly injections with a medication called Zoladex for 3 years in addition to taking Tamoxifen. The purpose of all of this would be to shutdown my ovaries and eliminate most of the estrogen from my body in order to starve any escapee cancer cells of estrogen (which in my case they need to survive). A very tempting option considering the risk profile in comparison to Chemo and even more tempting because I am just starting to feel 'human' again after my surgery and this option would allow us to get on with life....

So....after weeks of agonizing over what to do, two trips back to Hamilton to speak to my most amazingly patient and understanding Oncologist and several sleepless nights, I have decided to go ahead with chemotherapy.

Because I took so bloody long to make this decision, I pretty much had to start right away. I phoned them on Monday (October 4th) with my decision and I started my treatment yesterday (October 7th) and am now feeling pretty tired, very nauseous and a wee bit grumpy :-) (OK..VERY grumpy)

This decision was so difficult because in my case there was no clear cut answer and the benefits of chemotherapy may only be in the range of 5-8% for me....but again, I kept coming back to the same conclusion and decided to go with my gut on this one. I feel like I am taking a huge leap of faith and only time will tell if I have made the right decision. Being afraid of chemotherapy was a lame reason not to go ahead with it.

On a separate note - we received the results of my dad's genetic testing on Wednesday. As I expected, his blood test was negative. This means that my PTen mutation was inherited from my mom. While the clinical significance of this is still not known, it does mean that there is a stronger chance that my cancer was genetic. I have an appointment to see yet another specialist in a couple of weeks in order to be assessed for 'characteristics' of people with this type of genetic mutation....may the fun continue!!!!!!!!!