Quite a few people have been asking how @Mrs. Bentax (Jen) has been doing, which I really do appreciate, so I figured I would post an update since it's been a while. The short version is that things are going well and we're finally at a point where we see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel.
For those who may not have seen some of my other scattered posts that reference what's been going on the last year, Jen found a lump in her breast the morning of Thanksgiving. To be honest, neither she nor I really thought too much of it at the time. She was doing a lot of weight lifting at the time and the placement and feel of the lump was more like a muscle knot than anything else. Plus we had 16 people coming for Thanksgiving dinner in a few hours and no running water in the kitchen as of 11pm the night before. The next morning Jen made an appointment to get it checked out with her doctor just to be safe. They did an ultrasound and biopsy early the next week, but again neither of us were particular concerned at the time. She had a biopsy on another lump earlier that year and it turned out to be nothing, so I think we both assumed that was going to be the case this time as well.
Fast forward almost two weeks and I get a phone call from Jen during lunch. It's not unusual for her to call in the middle of the day, but typically she would text unless it was something important. As it turns out, she had just found out that the lump was cancer. The next few weeks were a bit of a blur, but we must have gone to well over a dozen appointments over the next few weeks trying to figure out exactly what we were dealing with and how to move forward. The initial thought was that the tumor was relatively small, was caught early, and would just need to be removed. Early on there was good reason to believe she wouldn't need chemotherapy, nor radiation. However as we got more imaging done, it became apparent that the tumor was a much larger than we had initially though and/or it grew rapidly over those few weeks. We also found out that at least one of her lymph nodes was involved. To top it off, the results of her genetic testing came back and she was BRAC2 positive. All of these factors made the prognosis considerably worse, and would make the treatment significantly more invasive.
So as a result of all of the new information, Jen started chemotherapy in the middle of January. She went through almost four months of chemo, which was followed by a bilateral mastecomy over Memorial Day weekend (it was a pretty easy decision for her to remove the second breast given the results of her genetic testing and the relatively high likelihood that she would eventually get breast cancer on the other side). About a month later she had reconstruction on both sides, and a couple weeks after that she started radiation. The radiation treatments lasted 6 weeks, which she just finished up about a week ago. In ten days she'll go in for one more surgery to remove her ovaries as a preventative measure, primarily due to the significantly elevated risk of ovarian cancer (~50%) due to her BRAC2 mutation.
But the good news is that everything since she started treatments has been going relatively smoothly. The tumor responded very well to the chemotherapy. The mastectomy was completed with no issues, and aside from the one lymph node that we knew was cancerous, no other cancerous lymph nodes were found. Reconstruction was also uncomplicated, and the fact that she was able to do it ahead of the original plan/schedule (before radiation instead of 9 months after) was a huge relief to her. Radiation, while a pain to have to deal with daily, also presented very few issues aside from what looks/feels like a really bad sunburn. But that's starting to heal and hopefully in a few weeks all that will remain of that will be a weird and uneven tan. She's somewhat concerned about the surgery next week, mainly in terms of the side effects associated with it, but given how well she's handled everything to this point, I have no doubt she'll get through whatever challenges arise.
I'd also like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for all of their support throughout the last year. It's really meant a lot to both of us. It's certainly been a very challenging and difficult year for us, but it's been made significantly easier with all of the love and support we've received from friends and family.
For those who may not have seen some of my other scattered posts that reference what's been going on the last year, Jen found a lump in her breast the morning of Thanksgiving. To be honest, neither she nor I really thought too much of it at the time. She was doing a lot of weight lifting at the time and the placement and feel of the lump was more like a muscle knot than anything else. Plus we had 16 people coming for Thanksgiving dinner in a few hours and no running water in the kitchen as of 11pm the night before. The next morning Jen made an appointment to get it checked out with her doctor just to be safe. They did an ultrasound and biopsy early the next week, but again neither of us were particular concerned at the time. She had a biopsy on another lump earlier that year and it turned out to be nothing, so I think we both assumed that was going to be the case this time as well.
Fast forward almost two weeks and I get a phone call from Jen during lunch. It's not unusual for her to call in the middle of the day, but typically she would text unless it was something important. As it turns out, she had just found out that the lump was cancer. The next few weeks were a bit of a blur, but we must have gone to well over a dozen appointments over the next few weeks trying to figure out exactly what we were dealing with and how to move forward. The initial thought was that the tumor was relatively small, was caught early, and would just need to be removed. Early on there was good reason to believe she wouldn't need chemotherapy, nor radiation. However as we got more imaging done, it became apparent that the tumor was a much larger than we had initially though and/or it grew rapidly over those few weeks. We also found out that at least one of her lymph nodes was involved. To top it off, the results of her genetic testing came back and she was BRAC2 positive. All of these factors made the prognosis considerably worse, and would make the treatment significantly more invasive.
So as a result of all of the new information, Jen started chemotherapy in the middle of January. She went through almost four months of chemo, which was followed by a bilateral mastecomy over Memorial Day weekend (it was a pretty easy decision for her to remove the second breast given the results of her genetic testing and the relatively high likelihood that she would eventually get breast cancer on the other side). About a month later she had reconstruction on both sides, and a couple weeks after that she started radiation. The radiation treatments lasted 6 weeks, which she just finished up about a week ago. In ten days she'll go in for one more surgery to remove her ovaries as a preventative measure, primarily due to the significantly elevated risk of ovarian cancer (~50%) due to her BRAC2 mutation.
But the good news is that everything since she started treatments has been going relatively smoothly. The tumor responded very well to the chemotherapy. The mastectomy was completed with no issues, and aside from the one lymph node that we knew was cancerous, no other cancerous lymph nodes were found. Reconstruction was also uncomplicated, and the fact that she was able to do it ahead of the original plan/schedule (before radiation instead of 9 months after) was a huge relief to her. Radiation, while a pain to have to deal with daily, also presented very few issues aside from what looks/feels like a really bad sunburn. But that's starting to heal and hopefully in a few weeks all that will remain of that will be a weird and uneven tan. She's somewhat concerned about the surgery next week, mainly in terms of the side effects associated with it, but given how well she's handled everything to this point, I have no doubt she'll get through whatever challenges arise.
I'd also like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for all of their support throughout the last year. It's really meant a lot to both of us. It's certainly been a very challenging and difficult year for us, but it's been made significantly easier with all of the love and support we've received from friends and family.
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