One of the problems with writing a blog about breast cancer is that when you stop posting articles people fear the worst. So I apologize to my husband's colleagues in far-flung lands who send him concerned emails from time to time. "Dear Peter, and your wife, she is well?" You'll be pleased to hear that I'm alive and kicking and fit as a fiddle. And working harder than I've every worked in my life. How nuts is that?
See that bell on the wall behind me? I rang it after my last chemo on August 31, 2011. It's a bit Monty Pythonish and lots of fun. My girls brought a big ice-cream cake in my favorite flavors - coffee and double chocolate - and we had a party with everyone in the infusion room!
Last week I popped into Norwalk Hospital for a checkup with Dr. Z, my oncologist. We had to talk about pills and other boring maintenance issues. Suddenly he looked me square in the eyes and said, "You're cured. Understand? You don't have breast cancer." Wow, great news, of course, but I'd never really believed I had it in the first place. Sure, I went along with the chemo plan just in case Dr. Z was right, but I was mostly in denial.
At this point, I'm trying to get back into my pre-cancer groove, which means getting back to the boathouse every morning and building up my strength so that I can race in the fall. It's been a frustrating few months. After the chemo I decided to have a mastectomy. My type of cancer, the lobular sort, often develops in the other breast and I figured that removing both of them would make it harder for new cancers to take hold. I won't bore you with the details, but I found the mastectomy and recovery far more brutal than the chemo. Maybe that was just me - or maybe my body was just fed up with having things done to it.
Dr. Barbara Ward was my breast cancer surgeon. The woman is a tower of strength, calm under pressure and I can't recommend her highly enough. And I'm sorry for all the rubbish I must have said when I was in the recovery room. My daughter says I was hilarious. Hmm.
My hair started growing as soon as chemo finished. This is my plastic surgeon, Dr. David Passaretti, who's fixing me up with new headlights!
Anyway, that's all in the past and I'm not going to think about it anymore. Time to get on with the rest of my life. But before I close the book on chemo, here's something wonderful I discovered this spring. Chemo reboots your immune system. At least that's what Dr Paget, head of Rheumatology at Hospital for Special Surgery in New York, told me. And my allergies have disappeared! Now that's nothing to sneeze at.
