Vacaville Reporter Headline: Living With Cancer, Ms. Vacaville Advocates for a Cure
Yesterday I was on the Front Page of the Sunday edition of the Vacaville Reporter, my hometown newspaper with the headline “Living with Cancer, Ms. Vacaville Advocates for a Cure.” How exciting is that?!
The article discussed my connection to Vacaville, my education/career, and my background story with Cancer which has led to my advocacy work, and the items I’ve done to promote my advocacy including this blog and the Solano County Pageant. I’m really happy with how it turned out and I’d like to thank Jessica, the local news reporter, for doing a great job representing me as a whole person.
If you’d like to read the full article you can find it here.
Now for treatment updates: I was able to get my treatment last Friday (see context here, if needed), so I’ve mostly been around the house since then. My mom was here for a couple of days to hang out and baby me a little. I enjoy her company and I never complain about dinner getting cooked for me so that was good. I’ve continued to do yoga and eat healthy which has helped me feel better a bit faster I think. It’s very tempting to eat all heavy starch foods, like potatoes and bread, because my stomach doesn’t feel the greatest, but I find that giving into that temptation slows down my overall progression getting through the side effects of the treatment. I’m not quite off all of the anti-nausea meds, but I am only 3 days out from treatment so that is not unusual at all.
And a little good news to end this post. I have a *preliminary* indication that this chemo is finally working and killing Cancer!
There are two main ways my doctor and I monitor my Cancer; blood work and scans. Blood work tests are less precise, but less damaging to me as a patient. Whereas, scans, specifically PET scans, are actually pretty harmful to the patient because it requires injection of a radioactive dye. Literally they will not let visitors in the room because of the radioactive material. Therefore, you want to rely on the blood work for more frequent monitoring and scans only as needed.
Results from my blood work show that there is less Cancer in my body than when my blood work was done 3 weeks ago. I’d really like for this trend to continue so I can transition to a less intensive treatment and hopefully stabilize my health for months, if not years. I’ll always have to stay on some form of treatment, but some are much less damaging to my quality of life than the chemos I’ve been on for several months now. This scenario (killing cancer with the platinum-based chemo I’m on and then transitioning to a less intense treatment to keep my Cancer at bay) is a realistic, best case scenario. Fingers-crossed, prayers, well wishes, or whatever you’ve got to send my way are appreciated!