36 hours

Update on the last 36 hours:

Texas Egg Hunt. I am Miss Pink Pants.
Andrea is Miss Lavender Pants. 

Yesterday Dr.Rosen eggstracted 22 eggs from my ovaries.  This is an eggcellent quantity by any of my doctors' standards.  They will be carefully frozen, then 'Egg Hoteled' at UCSF for the forseeable future.  The procedure went well with minimal pain afterwards.  It was only the anesthesia that made me eggstravagantly goofy and sleepy the rest of the day.



Today my Mom and I met with Dr. Melisko, my UCSF medical oncologist.  David was so irritated he could not miss work to be there. Dr. Melikso spent an extraordinary amount of time with us.  The UCSF Breast Tumor Board put in lots of thought and meticulous evaluation and re-evaluation of my clinical story and tumor biology.  They unequivically decided:

1. I am Her2 negative.  May tumor was tricky and if I had been Her2 positive I would be having a totally different treatment regimen so a lot hinged on this aspect of my tumor biology.  UCSF really went to town clarifying this.

2. I will have four cycles of chemotherapy (taxotere and cytoxan), each three weeks apart. Chemo will start sometime the week of Sept. 3rd. 

3. This next part we already new but to recap, after the chemo, they will give me monthly injections to turn off my ovaries, making me menopausal, and I will take 5 years of an Aromatase Inhibitor.  This drug blocks the enzyme aromatase, which turns the hormone androgen into small amounts of estrogen in the body. This means that less, if any, estrogen is available to stimulate the growth of estrogen receptor positive breast cancer cells that might be lurking somewhere after chemo or to help prevent my normal breast cells that for some genetic reason 'want' to turn cancerous, from doing so.


My eggs have been frozen once before.

4. I will likely get to take a break from the Aromatase Inhibitor two years after starting it, to unfreeze some of my eggs and have a baby with David. 

5. To be clear, I am not going to die from this cancer.  I just need a lot of treatment so that it never comes back.  Take that cancer!