Three Dogs Farm & Timber

I finally got my first set of after treatment and surgery scans! Good news on the CT scans of my chest abdomen and pelvis, it says no metastatic disease seen, of course that is what it said on my MRI after chemotherapy too, so I will take it with a grain of salt…because my pathology proved otherwise. My full body nuclear bone scan had some areas lit up, they think it may be old injuries or possibly arthritis, one is in the front of my skull bone though…I am scheduled for a brain MRI and another full body bone scan, but I asked if I could wait a bit. I have a pretty bad bruise still from the IV and injections after 9 days, and have been getting bad headaches since then too. It could be from the dye injected, or allergies, who knows? They did one of the Cancer Antigen tests finally and it is 12.7, supposedly that is good. My blood counts are still off, white blood count and some others having to do with immunity are still not normal, but slightly better. I finished radiation January 24th, you would think it would be better since it has been almost 2 months. I am still here, but some days are tough, I may still be standing, but even that is rough at times.

I am still standing, this past year and 4 months has been tough. I lost a lot of muscle strength, but have been working on it. My physical therapist says I am still a lot stronger than many women my age. I still have a lower than normal white blood count so I need to be mindful of where I go and what I do. I have started to feed my critters again, but my flock is much smaller than it used to be to be. I have w**d eated and mowed a bit, lol then been worn out for several days. It is going to take time, but my doctors think I will get my strength back eventually…I use to carry about 70 pounds of feed in buckets, not so much anymore. I can’t throw 50 pound feed sacks right now, but I can move them…I have to bear hug them.

I had a pretty good sized chunk removed from under my left arm and it starts hurting and swells when I do very much with that arm. But, I did muck out part of a chicken coop to test it. That was before I knew about my low white blood count. I guess it is common after 33 rounds of radiation. I will have to stick with small projects for awhile. They want me on hormone blockers and CDK 4/6 inhibitors, they don’t particularly make me feel very good, they are decreasing my dose and maybe it will help. If it doesn’t I may have to switch gears and do something different.

I am a tough 65 year old, I will beat this…I may just have to move to the beach and gather sea shells instead.

I have not updated in awhile…I am still here. I have not healed up from the two surgeries in two weeks 100%. I hope to get the drain out tomorrow after 8 weeks! I have another Radiation Oncology appointment soon, to create a new game plan since my pathology indicated the chemotherapy didn’t work at all and I had more lymph nodes involved…it is why I had a second surgery. As soon as I heal up some from the drain tube, I plan on trying to do a sort of inventory on my birds. I have not been out in the yard but we had some more deaths due to predators, I lost a Tom turkey and no telling what else. But, also had a few chicks and ducks hatch.

I am tough, but cancer treatment is hard on you. I am not sure how long it will take after they get done with me, until I have strength back. Time will tell. I may have to take a year off…and concentrate on my health more, I am not getting any younger.

Still alive and fairly well, but have had two surgeries. I am afraid the breast MRI was incorrect, it looks like chemotherapy did not work. I found that out after the first surgery through the pathology report, a second surgery was needed to hopefully get the rest out. Time will tell. I am still recovering from the second surgery, but will soon start taking hormone blockers and possibly CDK 4/6 kinase inhibitors? Hopefully they will keep more cancer from growing, but I still have radiation to go too.