Living with Cancer since 2007

The following is just a recap of ate's challenges from the past 2 years. She went through everything with a smile in her heart and hope that soon she will be well. I know she's holding on for her kids, and for everyone she loves. She has indeed been very strong through everything and right now, we're beginning another stage where we need her to continue her smiles and continue to hold on despite the difficulty.

2007

January 2007 -- we discovered the lump on her left breast, she had a minor surgery to take out the lump but the doctor saw that it was too big to take out so he only got a bit for biopsy (SURGERY # 1).

Early Feb 2007, biopsy results say that it was Invasive Ductal Carcinoma -- yup, she has breast cancer. We then went to a series of plans with our doctors thinking of what would be the most immediate and most effective plan for this. We ended up opting for mastectomy of the left breast with lumpectomy, where her lymph nodes on her left armpit were also taken out (SURGERY # 2).

By the end of February, my sister has undergone mastectomy, lumpectomy and breast reconstruction.

By mid April, the silicone that was implanted on her left breast was not reacting well with the heat and her body -- she had an infection and it had to be taken out and replaced with fats from her tummy and therefore a tummy tuck (SURGERY # 3).

Thankfully she had a good reaction to this last surgery and only had to worry about her wounds. She was given Tamoxifen (orally taken selective estrogen receptor modulator (SERM) that is used in the treatment of breast cancer) for her maintenance and we only had to pray that the cancer does not come back.

2008

She was really getting better, gaining reasonable weight and doing normal activities again until early June 2008 where we found lymph nodes in her supraclavicular region (near her clavicle) and thus it required another surgery (SURGERY #4) to get 11 lymph nodes, 7 of which is positive with metastasis of her breast cancer cells.

The presence of metastasis here required my sister to go under chemotherapy. She had 4 sessions of it, from August till late October. I think that was our hardest days, it was really painful for me to see ate lose her hair, had several bouts of nausea and other side effects. But my ate, strong as she is, she passed through every session like a breeze. The first 3 days right after getting chemo, she was weak but after these 3 days, she'd be doing her usual activities like nothing happened. From then on, i believed it would be hard to bring my sister down. She continuously laughed and smiled through everything with us. She must have been hurting and may have had moments of weakness -- but it was nothing compared to the hope and faith she showed.

October-November 2008 after chemo, we learned that cancer has spread to her bones -- spinal cord and the shoulder. As bad news as that was (again) we had some good news as well, she was ER/PR+, that means that her cancer cells are responsive to hormones and therefore Tamoxifen could just be continued so that her cancer cells would die on their own, and not multiply -- that means no more chemo for ate! And we prayed that the doctor's prediction would come true that the cancer cells would die with no estrogen to feed on.

She was gaining back her health and we were able to celebrate a happy Christmas and new year. It was an exciting 2009 to look forward to because she and her fiance are getting married in February in the US and will come back in 2010 to arrange their wedding here in the Philippines. Which brings me to now. Like I said, she developed brain metastasis and we're looking at whole brain radiation or gamma knife surgery to take out these lesions. When they arrive today, we'll go straight to the hospital to have her confined so that her condition will stabilize. We will be staying at the Manila Doctor's hospital under Dr. Arturo dela Pena's care and we will be arranging for her radiation sessions to start ASAP. I will quickly post an update here on what plan of action we will take and where she would get radiation. Please pray for her safe trip and that her condition stabilizes as soon as she gets here. If you also have any good radiologist/oncologist contacts, we would gladly appreciate if you could share their names with us so we may contact them maybe for a consult.

Well, I guess that's it, I hope I could add better developments in this timeline because I don't think I can add anymore to 4 surgeries, chemotherapy and radiation treatment...sometimes it all just seems too much. We went from stage 1 breast cancer to stage 4 in 2 years. and stage 4 is the last stage -- i know that. But I am hoping we defy statistics now. I want to do everything, whatever it takes to prolong her life (i know asking for a cure is too much right now) -- she's not giving up, and neither am i.