let this year end

In with 2024

My New Year's goals for 2023 were to spend quality time with my family, finish some key writing projects, level up at work, and purchase a new TV couch. Six weeks into the new year, I discovered a lump in my breast during a regular self-check, and I had a prescient moment of clarity—without any factual support at that point—when I knew none of those goals would happen this year. 

I've had that same feeling before: April 1995. It's a feeling like a sharp slap in the face when I knew nothing would ever be the same. I wasn't wrong. Either time.

Which is why I'm looking forward to 2024 with hope and optimism for what's ahead and gratitude for the opportunity to live it. 

Treatment Update or How Are You Doing?

Baby tennis ball hair!

I hear myself telling people that I'm definitely feeling better but still feeling bad. It seems to be the most honest answer. 

Since the final big-bad infusion of chemotherapy (10/27/23), I continue to get the Phesgo shot every three weeks. This is the targeted HER2 anti-cancer immunotherapy drugs injected into my thigh. This shot has always been included with the earlier chemotherapy infusions, and the Oncologist wants to continue this part of my treatment into July 2024, for a total of 18 of these treatments. So far, so good. 

I also started radiation treatment after a (brief) six weeks of recovery from the final chemo infusion. The full plan is a daily series, Monday-Friday, excluding holidays (Christmas and New Years), for a total of 20 treatments. As of today, I have completed 16 of the 20. The target  has been a broad scope of the left breast and corresponding lymph nodes. The final four treatments will be a narrow target of the incision area where the original tumor was removed. 

Side effects of radiation are minimal. I have not experienced any surface tissue damage or irritation so far (knock on all the wood of the world). Fatigue and mild stomach and intestinal irritation persist, but I can't tell if those are remnants from the big-bad chemo drug (Taxotere), ongoing Phesgo shots, or from the radiation. 

Celebrating Healing and the Holidays

The worst of the chemo side-effects are fading, some faster than others. My hair is coming back! My fingernails are growing. Taste and smell are returning slowly, and coffee is lovely again. The muscle pain from that last round of chemo still remains, and the neuropathy is also slow to go. I remain optimistic. 

Thanksgiving arrived, and the kids made dinner for us (except Rick did the turkey and the gravy). All of the food was delicious. Christmas arrived, and luckily I'd had enough foresight to have done most of my holiday shopping back in July. So I did some last minute online shopping, and our celebrations were mostly stress-free. 

Big News in Healing: we went out. Mid-December, I felt well enough to risk a two-hour drive, and we spent two nights away from home on the Oregon coast. We rented a beach house overlooking Depoe Bay, ordered food in or made it ourselves, watched whales, the ocean, big winter storms, fishing boats and the rain, and we never left the house all weekend. It's the first traveling of the year that wasn't to/from a hospital. Our last big adventure out was last Christmas (2022) in Utah. 

Wow, it's been a long year. 

Celebrating Us

My seasonal holiday-card (pantry) door is covered top-to-bottom with cards and postcards and notes, holiday and/or otherwise. I hear your kind words of encouragement and love. Thank you!

Each of you has made a difference throughout this unexpected challenge, and I appreciate every big/little thing that connects me to you. 

I'm celebrating each of you as this long, hard year turns over to the new one. Here's to us all!

~ Sherri

talking about

how might I hold

my beholden out to you

and you hold yours out to me, 

how do we be holding each other,

                                            ~ Ross Gay, from Be Holding, a poem