Dad's update - May 5th, 2008

Hi Everyone –

Sorry – I’ve been delinquent on getting out an update on Rebecca. I know a lot of you are thinking about her, and would like to be able to make sure that everything’s going OK a little more frequently. I’m just behind on everything – but I’ll try to do better in the future!
We are now half-way through all of the chemo treatments. The first 4 treatments were with the chemicals adriamycin and cytoxin (known as “AC”), and those are now all complete. Tomorrow, we will start the second half of chemotherapy, with a completely different chemical agent. This one is Taxol, and it has a different set of potential side effects.
Rebecca was able to get through the first phase better than we feared when we began this course. She did have nausea (though she never threw up), headaches (very frequently, and often severe), bone pain (because of the Neulasta shots to increase white blood cell counts), and the worst thing – insomnia. She did have brief period with heartburn (which was mostly alleviated with Prilosec OTC), and with mouth sores. Both of these last two seemed to go away fairly quickly. In addition, Rebecca did get a respiratory infection, but rapid treatment with antibiotics knocked that out pretty quickly. The overall symptom which everyone experiences is fatigue and general tiredness. She also had “fuzzy” eyesight, which is a temporary side effect, but it keeps her from being able to read much. Occasionally, she has weird pains in weird places, but they always seem to be temporary for a half-day or day.
We don’t know exactly what to expect from Taxol (unlike “Tax-All”, the main platform in the Democratic party, which will make all of us sick and tired very quickly. Sorry – just had to see if any of you are awake while reading this.) First of all, Rebecca will have to go in today for a shot of steroids before we can start chemo tomorrow. This is to prevent a possible allergic reaction which occurs in some patients using Taxol. If she has no signs of reaction, they won’t have to pre-medicate her before the next sessions. The actual infusion takes a lot longer to administer. The AC took about an hour and a half to two hours for the actual infusion. Taxol requires several hours, in addition to all of the other procedures we do on infusion days (preliminary blood tests to make sure blood counts are OK, exams, consultations, IV preparation, etc.). So, the infusion days will probably be longer. And, Rebecca will still have to go in the day after infusion for the Neulasta shots.
As far as side effects, we don’t really know what to expect. The headaches are expected to diminish. The main potential side effect about which Rebecca has some anxiety is temporary numbness or tingling in hands and feet – sort of like when your hand or arm falls asleep and you feel the “needles” afterwards. We really hope she can avoid those!
Rebecca has had very good spirits. With the exception of the couple of weeks of insomnia, she has actually been doing remarkably well under the circumstances. Fortunately, we seem to have gotten better control of that recently. Last week, she went down to St. George with her friend Claudean for about 5 days to get away from work and be able to really get some rest and relaxation.
The good news is that we can tell that her tumor has both softened and shrunk significantly. We probably won’t have any medical tests to physically measure the shrinkage until after the chemo is all complete (about mid-June). This will be in preparation for whatever surgery we decide to take place in July.
We should get the results of Rebecca’s genetic testing this week. This test will tell us if Rebecca carries the gene that pre-disposes some women to breast cancer. If that is negative, we still have a very good chance of choosing a lumpectomy rather than a mastectomy. If she is positive, we will need to decide between a mastectomy, or worst case – a bilateral mastectomy. Even though she only has the cancer on one side, if she has the breast cancer gene, it may be best to choose to eliminate any chance of recurrence right now.
We are also looking forward to this Saturday when many friends and family will join us in the Susan G. Komen “Walk For The Cure” which her amazing coworkers at HCI have planned to do as a "team". The t-shirts they had made are really impressive (Mica in HCI's marketing department created the logo, Amy did all the planning and registering, Kiley's friend printed the t-shirts up at cost (did I mention Rebecca works with really amazing people?). Watch for pictures from our adventure next week.

Thank you all for your continuing love, faith, support, thoughts, and prayers.

Mark