Hope Floats

Hope, the definition of hope according to the Merriam Webster dictionary is to cherish a desire with anticipation, to desire with expectation of obtainment, to expect with confidence.

Hope is what I have.  I expect to obtain remission from my cancer with confidence.  I know that I can fight this and win.

Yesterday I had my MRI (not fun) and met with my radiation oncologist.  I really loved her.  While the news wasn't great she was very hopefully that this can be taken care of.  While I don't have a tumor, which I thought was good news turns out is not.  Instead of a tumor the cancer cells have taken over almost half of the tissue of my left breast.  Yay! Not!

The good news is that it is the most common form of breast cancer, which responds the best to treatment.  We have a plan which is going to be a bit different than most.  We are going to do chemo first, then surgery, then radiation. 

Her purpose in doing chemo first is so that I can get at it and not have to wait for a surgery to heal before we can start to kill the cancer cells.  This will also show us the effect that the chemo is having on the cancer cells and make sure that we are using the most effective drugs to kill it.  She said that it can be very validating to watch the cancer cells decrease. 

So not the best news, but not the worst.  My appointment with my medical oncologist is today, along with a PET scan, since two of my lymph nodes are swollen they are expected to be involved and we need to make sure since we are doing surgery later this is the best way to find out. 

Lots of appointments and tests, lots of information to process.  I am very lucky.  I have a great support team, several of whom is knowledgeable about medicine.  I have a wonderful husband whose main goal is to make this the easiest on me as possible.  I am blessed, who would not want to fight this and get rid of it to live happily ever after? 

So today hope floats, even if I get pushed under a wave of information and doubts, hope floats.  I expect with confidence to obtain the goal of making this disease vacate this body of mine, it still has a lot of life left in it.