its been almost a month since michele finished the tougher round of chemo. we were so focused on getting her through the actual chemo that we forgot that she still has to do herceptin every three weeks until december.

michele is triple positive which means her tumor is estrogen, progesterone, and her2 positive and that means those three fun things are fueling her tumor. years ago it was a bad thing to be her2 positive because it was harder to treat. her2 is a protein that cancer cells make too much of which in turn can make your cancer more mean and aggressive like a dude or lady on steroids.

chemo and endocrine therapies didn’t specifically target her2 hence the chances of reoccurrence were a lot higher and with no real effective way to treat it well needless to say not a good thing back then at least.

however herceptin and perjeta have been huge game changers for women who are her2 positive. because they do specifically target the her2 receptors and significantly reduce reoccurrence. those medications bring the metaphorical juice head back to their wimpy pre-roid stage.

michele has finished the first part of her chemo protocol but like i said still has herceptin till december. however we’re also still not 100% out of the chemo woods yet either. she is on a newer protocol so she started off with (taxotere, carboplatin, herceptin, perjeta) then the next step is surgery.

during surgery aside from cutting up your upper lady parts, they’re going to be removing a good amount of lymph nodes from her left side and the sentinel node from right. they look at everything they took to officially stage your cancer and also to see if there is any cancer left.

if everything looks good ie the tumor dies the right way then no more chemo. if mr or mrs tumor didn’t have the painful death we were hoping its a second round of chemo called AC (adriamycin, cyclophosphamide) aka the red devil. its named that for two reasons one its apparently a super brutal chemo and two because it is a red liquid.

unfortunately we won’t know if a second chemo is in the cards until after surgery when they have the pathology report. the tumor has shrunk significantly which is a great sign! but still keep those fingers, toes, boobs, whatever you can cross lets cross to send michele good luck and make sure we killed that tumor dead.

here are some fun pics during the whole chemo process.

before this crazy chemo ride. (josh trying to be artistic and us ruining it by trying not to laugh)

 

middle aka is the ride over yet?

 

 

end- yay, michele is done. damn we forgot about herceptin.