This is Amy's husband Jesse..

It saddens me to say that Amy lost her battle with Metastatic Breast Cancer on June 13, 2015 at 11:24 AM.

If you would like to donate to our family please go to the following link. Any donation would be greatly appreciated.

Amy's Cancer Fund

Thank you

LBBC Conference and Chemo

I went to the Living Beyond Breast Cancer Conference in Philadelphia, PA this weekend.  There were a few good speakers, some interesting vendors, and some interesting new metsters (people with metastatic breast cancer) to meet.  I was worried about handling the flight, but managed it without too much trouble.

Today, I had like my 4th or 5th Halavan chemo treatment.  It started out with me getting sick, but they quickly got that under control and the rest of it went smoothly.  I now have to get a pre-liver panel done and three post neupogen shots(for low white blood cells).   Hopefully this stuff is working.

The also increased my pain meds to three Oxycotin doses a day and told me to take the liquid morphine when I got to level 5 pain instead of 8.   This is is in an effort to better control my stomach pain.

Long Awaited Blog Entry

Ok, here is your long awaited and highly requested blog entry.  This month I had my Y90 mapping and infusion done.  This is the process where they plant little gelatin capsules full of radiation into my liver via a blood vessel in my leg.  It is a highly targeted radiation and mainly only damages tumor material and leaves the good liver material in tact.  This was finished up last Monday and I was supposed to have a week of "real bad flu like systems".   I can't say I ever had those, but I definitely felt pretty out of it and had some serious issues with my stomach and eating.  I lost about 20 lbs over the past few weeks.   I'm just now getting back to where I can somewhat normal again.

I also, over the past few weeks started a new chemo called, Halovan.  My first round was a bit too strong and wiped out my entire immune system.  I had to go get 4 days worth of Neupogen shots to boost it back up last time.  At the same time, Jesse was busy bringing in a bad "sinus infection/bronchitis like thing" for me to get.  Thanks for the prayers, I managed to dodge this somehow and never got sick!  No way I dodged that without them! Besides the immune system dropping out on me, I had very few noticeable side effects from the chemo.  It seemed to only effect immune system and give me some mouth sores.

I had to go to to the ER this weekend due to stomach pain.  They had to break down and give me some liquid morphine and experiment a little with my Oxycontin to see what would help.   We found doubling it makes me a zombie, and are currently just using the morphine for break through pain.

I had my second chemo round today, hopefully I won't have too many side effects.

Decisions

Big decisions to be made this week.  I have an appointment with my local oncologist on Wednesday and one at MD Anderson on Thursday. I'm hoping to get some recommendations so I can come home and make some decisions.

I'm actually ready to be back on treatment because it's always pretty painful being off of it. The last few days I've been dealing with some pretty serious pain in my tailbone.

Liver Biopsy

I just realized I haven't updated my blog in quite a while and thought that maybe I should.  A lot has happened since the last entry.  The scans came back showing progression in the liver and ovaries.

After a discussion with my local oncologist, we agreed that a liver biopsy was the next best course of action.  The liver has been unresponsive to all treatments this year, leading us to believe that the receptor status may have changed.  A liver biopsy will confirm receptor status and also check for some other subtypes that may qualify me for some new clinical trials.

The biopsy is scheduled for Thursday this week.  I spoke to them and it sounds rather straight forward and simple.  They will simple make a small incision, and do a core biopsy using a small cylindrical tube about the size of a pen.  The tissue obtained will be tested for ER, PR, HER2, Androgen, FGFR, and GPNMB.  There are several trials the local oncologist has that I may qualify for after the biopsy results are in.

I also plan to make a trip down to MD Anderson to get a second opinion on treatment options at this point.  This is sort of a critical point, because if I choose to do a treatment involving chemo, I'll be on my 3rd chemo.  Many trials will not take you if you have had more than 3 types of chemo.