Tuesday March 6 Update

Happy March 6! This is the day we went for the full body thermogram. Of course we won’t have the actual reading and evaluation back for a couple of weeks, but it looks pretty good at this point. The doctor who did the thermogram said that while he is not trained to look for all the details there was nothing other than the issue in the breast that jumped out at him. When I asked him if they’d tell me in the evaluation when I needed to have another full body thermogram, he said I would only need to have a breast thermogram the next time. This one will serve as a base so that the next time we take one it can be used to measure any change against the one we did today. That tells me that he doesn’t see any indication of cancer anywhere else in my body.

That means that we will likely proceed with aggressive action against the breast cancer and not be necessarily shooting to kill cancer everywhere in my body since it appears to be only in my breast. What is there IS still there, although it is smaller than it was. When the evaluation comes back we will know better what approach to take and we will consult with more doctors and make a plan. In the meantime I will continue with my present protocol, which is complete in 3 weeks. I will keep you posted on this blog as anything changes.

For your information, let me explain a little better what a thermogram does. (Please realize that I am no doctor and this is really in lay terms!) It measures the heat of my body, so when a ‘hot spot’ appears in the picture it indicates that there is a lot of activity in that area. That indicates cancer could be there because my body is sending a lot of blood to that particular place for some reason. Usually if a thermogram is done and a hot spot is seen, then other tests are run to determine exactly what the hot spot means. In my case, we already knew about the cancer, but we were doing the thermogram to see if we could tell how much effect my treatments have had on the cancer so far, and primarily to determine if this breast cancer had spread to other parts of my body.

Since it appears that the rest of my body is clear of cancer, then we know better how to approach the breast cancer. Of course we will know more once we get the complete evaluation and consult with additional doctors.

De-stressing is the most impossible thing to do when I’m talking about cancer in my own family. It makes some things very easy to delete from my life, though. Like when someone sends me an invitation to join a club, it’s so easy to know that a club is on the bottom of my list of priorities. If I have on make up really doesn’t matter anymore. If I have hair doesn’t matter to me, either. I have enough, by the way; it’s thinner than it’s ever been on me before, but it still covers most of my head. It’s way thin in spots, but how can I care about that? The best part is that I can dry it in about 45 seconds. We have a perfect baby granddaughter and 13 more besides her; who cares about hair, make up or a club???

Speaking of perfect baby granddaughter, here she is today with her Poppy. She has gobs of clothes but very few pieces that fit her. Gretta washed this outfit in hot water and dried it on high to shrink it, so she wears it a lot! I love it because it has hearts on the pants and I call them the ‘everyone loves Elena pants.’ She doesn’t spit up, so she doesn’t get dirty much. She’s really a good baby! Garrett is a wonderful big brother, too. He is very proud of his little sister and very good with her. What a great help he is to Gretta! After the pictures of Elena and Pop is Garrett working on today’s homework. This picture of Garrett reminds me of his cousin, Nate. (Trish, do you see it?)

I’m frustrated today because I haven’t been able to connect with the WIFY from Gretta’s house. I’ll go to MacDonald’s and send this in the morning if it doesn’t go tonight.

Thanks, for hanging tough with me as we travel. Thanks for your prayers and support. I feel good and feel very blessed with the informal report that we got today. I thank God for all His blessings for all of us and love you all.