October 2024 Scan Results

I’m sad to report that my recent PET scan showed new metastases to my vertebrae and liver. Whereas in previous PET scan reports, the first sentence was “No evidence of new disease”, this report had five bullet points right off the bat. My layperson’s summation of the PET report is as follows: a light sprinkling of areas of concern…maybe or maybe not cancer. With this annoyingly vague information I had a follow up MRI to clarify and that report indicated that yes, the areas of concern were most likely cancer. 

The next step will be a liver biopsy. This will serve a couple different purposes. First, it should confirm that this is what it appears to be, breast cancer that has metastasized to the liver. While a definitive biopsy is not really needed once the cancer has broken free of the original organ (they are not going to biopsy every single spot that starts to pop up over the progression of disease), it is comforting to me that they would biopsy this in light of the misdiagnosed rib infection fiasco of 2020. Second, we will be able to gather information about how the cancer cells might be changing and how to best alter treatment with next generation sequencing. This is basically a way to study the genetic makeup of the cancer cells that have most likely developed some sort of resistance (due to gene mutations) to my current treatment.

Because it will probably take around a month for all of this information to shake out and for me to develop a new plan with my oncologist, I’m choosing to share this information now, with the caveat that I don’t have a lot of answers yet. I can definitely report that the areas of concern seem to be small and I’m not in any extreme pain or discomfort that would warrant any emergency treatment. There are still many more treatment options available and I don’t foresee any dramatic changes treatment or prognosis-wise in the next few months, hopefully even years.  

I know what you’re thinking…what was all that 20 more years talk from my last post?!? I’m right there with you. That is cancer for you, it changes your life on a dime and can abruptly extinguish every single hope and dream you have for the future in a second. Will the hope come back? Yes, I firmly believe so, at least for a while. But it sure is difficult to keep moving forward in life with this information. In the words of Andy Dufresne in the Shawshank Redemption: “Get busy living, or get busy dying”. Those words contain so much weight when you are living with metastatic cancer. Everyday we wake up with a choice of how to live out the day in front of us. For most of us, certainly most days of my life, most days are spent trying to get by, surviving, “working for the weekend”, keeping our heads above water and minds out of the gutter. As we get closer to the finish line, as our days become numbered, each day and each moment becomes both more precious and more intense. I struggled during COVID because it seemed obvious that time was being wasted and we were never going to get those times back. Life is a delicate balance of living for the moment and planning for the future and adding cancer to the mix only intensifies that balance. It’s like life is the Indy 500 and you’re racing through all these laps of life, getting tune ups, crashing occasionally, going fast, then slow. A cancer diagnosis can feel like you just hit the accelerator, and not in a good way. It’s unnerving, scary, and anxiety provoking. For me personally, as someone who manages anxiety through planning and control, I needed to have some type of plan for the next progression and I managed that through quitting my job three years ago. As was probably evidenced in my last post, I was definitely questioning whether or not I had been a bit premature in that decision. While I guess I could arguably feel “vindicated” now that the cancer has spread, it’s not a great feeling. I feel like the two possible options in my job situation were an awkward feeling of thinking I should have stayed the course longer and the feeling I have now, which is the disappointment of losing one battle in my war on cancer.

On Tuesday I will have my fourth biopsy (sixth if you include biopsies that were part of surgeries). I feel like not only am I becoming a professional cancer patient, but I’m also on my way to setting records in numbers of biopsies. All things considered, though, I’m feeling well overall and we continue to aggressively monitor and treat this disease. I am by no means on my deathbed, we’ve just hit a bump in the road. My “race car” just needs a few small repairs. To drive home the point, when I told my boys about the progression, it didn’t seem to phase them too much. Sure, they might be hiding feelings and we are a fairly stoic family overall, but I think this also speaks towards how long and gradual this battle has been for me. I was originally diagnosed before Steele could even talk. In some ways they don’t know anything other than a parent with cancer and thankfully it has been much more of a quiet hum in our lives than a fantastical crash. All of this is fairly standard if not best case scenario for someone with my diagnosis. I will follow up in a few weeks, but I don’t expect much to change other than a few medications.

Author: katiewardstage4

I am a 44 year old pharmacist and mother of two currently living in Madison, WI. In my spare time I enjoy running and baking. Starting this blog has enabled me to record some of my feelings about being diagnosed with breast cancer and has also given me the realization that writing for a living would be much more difficult than I would have guessed. View all posts by katiewardstage4