My Breast Cancer Story

hey everybody I thought we could do a little lunch and a little talk about my breast cancer since I just had chemo yesterday if you notice I'm I'm not wearing any makeup today because it's the day after chemo and I'm exhausted and I just don't feel like wearing any makeup the flushing you see is what we call the chemo flush that happens after you've had um chemotherapy with all the steroids and everything and so I'm going to eat a little soup you may be wondering how can you eat soup after k because I'm on three different anti nauseum meds that's how I can still eat soup after chemo um so let's start with um my name since I haven't told anybody my name my name is Lisa and I was um diagnosed with stage two breast cancer in January of 2019 I actually found the lump myself in the shower and I went to the emergency room because I was so terrified and was immediately dismissed and told that I was too young and I shouldn't worry about it but of course I did worry about it and so I went um and called to get a mammogram my first ever because I was 37 and you don't or 36 it was right before my birthday and you don't get mammograms Before 40 unless you have a history of breast cancer in your family which I did not and so I was sent for a diagnostic mamogram where they did a mammogram and an ultrasound and I never received a call back from them for anything I actually received a call from the breast surgeons office telling me I need to come in and have a um biopsy that they had found some abnormalities and I need to come in and have a biopsy so February 1st of 2019 I went in and I had um a biopsy and that took a couple days to come back and when it came back we went into the office and he sat down across for me and he told me I am so sorry to tell you this but it is breast cancer and it's a very aggressive form of breast cancer it's called her two positive um there are treatments for it that work very well but unbeknown to me at the time the treatments work but her two positive has a very high recurrence rate about 30% and in those 30% of cases 50% of the time it comes back in your brain and so I wasn't told that at the time I was told this treatment works very well and then um I was told I would need to have a bilateral myectomy because um there were too many tumors I had four tumors in my one breast and so I could not have like a lump ectomy or whatever it wouldn't work they they'd have to I mean there would be nothing left so he originally told me I would only need a one MC me I decided on the bilateral so that I could have reconstruction and have both sides look the same because I just didn't want two different looking boobs I guess if that's so I went through treatment I did six rounds of what is called tchp which is taxer carbo plattin her septin and petta and I finished those up and I was extremely sick through that treatment um lost a lot of weight I lost all my hair all my eyebrows all my eyelashes in fact my eyebrows are still gone I still don't have any and uh my eyelashes did come back but I lost every all my hair everywhere it's not particular to your head the good thing about that was it was summer time so I didn't really have to shave do any type of anything I could walk around just bald and that was fine um so I did that uh we went to the beach after that to celebrate that I had finished my six rounds and then I had my surgery I had a bilateral myectomy and I um did very well through that surgery although we found out that I wake up swinging when I come out of anesthesia and trying to rip out every IV that I had so that was interesting um the I didn't expect that neither did the nurses apparently so I did that and then I went on to have the fin the remaining treatments of my immunotherapy which is her setin I did that and I was declared no evidence of disease in March of 2020 um and I finished my last treatment on March 11th of 2020 and I continued to live life I thought I was done I thought everything was good and I was ready to go and you know I was feeling good I um lost the weight that I had gained after treatment was over and um um I was feeling good in June of 2021 I started having some back pain now I'm an active person I exercise I attributed the back pain to I hurt myself um I attributed it to I was cleaning out the swimming pool I was doing all kinds of stuff that could have hurt my back but the back pain wasn't getting any better and it it continued to get worse and I told my doctors and they kind of thought the same thing I did well she hurt herself um you know it it just didn't really the first thing I didn't thought of was not that cancer was back I just didn't I didn't think about that and so I kind of just took some pain relief and just went on living life with a little bit of back pain it wasn't really anything that stopped me from doing what I wanted to do so that H that continued on um in July the back pain got a little worse and I again said hey my back hurts but you know it's nothing I can't live with right now I'm I'm I think I'm okay it's just I think I must have hurt myself doing something um in August it started to get really bad I was pretty much um unable to really do a lot I spent a lot of time laying on a heating pet in my bed any type of pain reliever was not working uh I tried patches I tried pills I tried everything I could try and it just was not working and and um I wound up in the emergency room because not only was I having back pain but I was having a cough and not just a little cough a cough to where I couldn't even breathe um I couldn't speak because every time I would talk I would just cough and it was a hard like gut-wrenching cough it brought me to tears because it hurt so bad to cough um they did some blood work in the emergency room so they didn't really see anything they did a chest x-ray and said we don't really see anything on your chest x-ray here's some cough medicine you know go home call us when it if it doesn't stop basically take these pills and if by the end it's not over if it doesn't stop call us back um the cough never went away the cough continued um I got my metabolic blood work back they didn't wait in the hospital to see my metabolics they only did my complete blood panel so they didn't wait to see my metabolic panel had they waited to see my metabolic panel they would have seen that my liver numbers were Skyhigh I mean they were ridiculously high my calcium which the highest your supposed to be is a 10.5 was over 11 and calcium when your calcium gets too high it can literally stop your heart you can die I mean your body is very regulated in all of those things and so I had had an appointment with my surgeon and I asked him I said you know my calcium is high I have this cough I have this back pain do you have any is there any reason that this is going on and he said yeah I can't I don't really have a reason for that but we'll re you know we'll recheck your calcium don't take any don't take any calcium pills we'll recheck your calcium about six weeks and see how it is and so I said okay I guess I'll just go on doing what I've been doing and trying to survive with this pain and this cough Labor Day of 2021 I came down from my room and I live with my my parents and my three kids I came down from my room I told my parent well I laid down on the couch and I told my mom I felt like I was dying and she said we're taking you to the emergency room and I don't want you to call me until you have it until someone tells you what is going on because you are not well you you we can't go another weekend with you like this and so we she took me to the emergency room and I went into the emergency room and I originally told them that I thought I had a kidney infection because that was the only way I thought I was going to get seen that day they took me the back they did a urine sample I did it did turn out I had a UTI so I didn't really I wasn't fibbing on that either they did some blood work and we waited for they waited for that to come back and when that came back I was immediately rushed into a trauma room because my calcium was over 15 and I should have been in a coma I should not have been able to walk into the ER I shouldn't have been able to I shouldn't have been conscious and able to tell them what was going on with me by the grace of God I walked into the ER that day they still can't believe it to this day I'm a walking Miracle to this day they don't know how I did it and I they took me into the trauma room told me my calcium was over 15 they um the ER doctor came in and asked me he said I see you have a history of breast cancer when was your last treatment are you still in treatment what's going on I told him I'd had this horrendous back pain I have this cough and he said well he said my fear is is that your breast cancer has come back and we're going to do some scans and find out what's going on and so he immediately ordered a CT and an MRI um I went in for the CT I went in for the MRI those came back really fast the doctor actually came in sat down next to my bed took me by the hand and told me that from what he could see on what they could see on the CT the breast cancer was back in my pelvis it was in my bones and they were going to call my um oncologist because he needed to come in and talk to me so they did call my oncologist my oncologist came in and talked to me and not only had the breast cancer come back in my bones but my liver was completely covered you could not see my liver through the tumors in my liver um that's how bad my liver was I had also been losing weight a lot of weight I am 5'11 and I was down to 156 PBS I looked like a walking skeleton there was nothing left um I yeah they also found it in my lungs I had tumors in my lungs which explained the constant coughing and I had a 3 cm tumor in my cerebellum and so that was pretty crushing because it was like every news we got was worse that there was no news coming back from those scans that was good and so I immediately broke down I started crying I asked if I could call my mom and have her come because this was right during a height of covid people couldn't come into the hospital and they ER doctor actually said why don't you go ahead and call your mom um and I will call down to the front desk and she won't have a problem getting in I don't remember what I said but my mom said when I called her I was screaming crying and screaming into the phone it's back it's back and it's everywhere and I'm dying um so she came in she came in and sat with me in the trauma room they gave me some medicine to bring my calcium level down so that I would not have going to Cardiac Arrest right there in the trauma room and then eventually I was taken upstairs where I did a 5-day Hospital stay and um where I was not really allowed out of bed uh because they were afraid I was going to fall because I could barely walk with all the tumors in my pelvis one of the tumors was so large it had actually eaten through my pelvis and so it had cracked my pelvis and I was W literally walking on a broken pelvis it was excruciatingly painful I was 39 years old I couldn't walk without a walker I looked like The Walking Dead it was awful I don't even know how I live through it because it was so bad I was released from the hospital after 5 days and I had to go back and get a PK put in because they had taken my port out for my previous treatment in July of 2021 and then I was diagnosed stage 4 in September of 2021 and stage four is confusing for people stage four is not curable um you are literally in treatment for life so I have been getting chemo every 3 weeks since 2021 and I've also done numerous bouts of radiation I had radiation to that 3 cm tumor in my cerebellum they did something called stereo tactic radio surgery which is like they can Target that specific tumor they don't have to do whole brain for that and then I had radiation to my pelvis because it was so extremely painful they had to do something to kill the cancer so that it could heal and they did that and that worked it took a little while but it actually worked I can walk normal I mean I don't have a whole lot of pain when I walk anymore um I recently had a new brain tumor pop up like right here in the top part of my head and I did stereotyp IC radio surgery to that too um and that was successful it shrunk um we for right now they say I have two other little spots but we think those have been there for a long time they've been there since I was diagnosed they've not grown they've not changed we're just leaving those alone we're not going to do anything with those um by the by the sheer grace of God I'm alive today because I should not be I should be dead I thank God every single day that I am here I was placed on a new treatment um in February of 2022 a treatment called in her because the brain lesions went from that one Tor in my cerebellum to 19 brain lesions I had 19 brain lesions and so they can't do sprt on 19 brain lesions it'll eat holes like your brain will be swiss cheese so they started me on this new treatment called inh heru which was fairly new at the time and um within three months it had eradicated all but three brain tumors that one that was up here that we just did sprt on and then the other two tiny little ones that haven't changed since I've started that treatment and for the most part I live a pretty normal life um I take care of my kids I go to church I am a Christian I'm extremely blessed I don't suffer from a lot of depression I don't suffer from a lot of overwhelming fear or anxiety I think um God has really protected me in that and Tak care of me in that way I I was literally on the brink of death I mean there was the doctors told my mom that in 12 hours I would have been dead and I would have just died in my sleep and nobody would have known why and so I feel extremely blessed that I'm still here today that I'm here my my son plays football I've been been able to go to every one of his football games I've seen him play every game um my other son is does band I've been able to go to Every band concert my daughter is in chorus I have gone to every chorus performance I have done every school function whether I was in chemo it didn't matter if I was sick I have done all of it and I have not missed anything and I am so grateful I am grateful to God because really he saved my life there is no other way to explain it my doctors can't explain it they don't know how I'm still here today they can't figure it they I shouldn't be here I should be gone um so I feel like God kept me here for a purpose and my purpose is to give others hope and say if I can take if I can do this if I can do it so can you Patty sorry she's getting a little Rowdy over here if I can do it so can you and um be vigilant don't let people brush you off don't let doctors brush you off don't let them tell you it's not anything if you feel that there's something wrong tell them there's something wrong and I need to be this needs to be looked at because something is not right with me and I know because it's my body but that I wanted to share my story a little bit and I um actually I've given my testimony numerous times to different people in different places but I didn't want to um read my whole testimony on here that would have just been a lot but I wanted to end with a quote from a song that is very um is very special and it says all my life you have been faithful all my life you have been so so good with every breath that I am able I will sing of the goodness of God and I do I sing of the goodness of God every day I listen to worship music that just lifts me up and when I'm in chemo that's what I listen to I put my earbuds in and I sit there and I listen and I just thank God for his goodness and his healing and right now my liver is completely clear I don't have any tumors left in my liver my lungs are completely clear I don't have any tumors left in my lungs my bones are still healing I have a lot of disease in the bone but I don't have a lot of pain in my bones so that is that is amazing um so God continues to be good to me he continues to bless me he continues to give me wonderful experience with my family and my friends and um I couldn't be any more grateful I couldn't be any more grateful for um the support that I received from people just everybody has just been so supportive and for years it's not a short-term thing this disease is not short-term this is disease is forever and so I have had so much support from people who have loved on me and loved on my kids and organizations that have come alongside me to help me and if you're interested in any of those you can look up camp kesum you can look up thumbs up inheritance of hope all of those are wonderful um wonderful things they they come alongside you they come alongside your kids my kids love Camp kesum my kids love thumbs up we've done new we've done a couple things with thumbs up and my kids will be going back to camp kesum for the third year this year and they're just so looking forward to that they can go be with people um who have parents that have cancer and be with counselors who have dealt with this before or who have family that has it it's a real place of understanding and so thumbs up is the same way it's a family Retreat for families dealing with cancer so is inheritance of Hope and they provide all of those things for free as does Camp cassum so I want to thank all of you for sitting and listening to my story and I hope I've provided some of you with some hope if you're dealing with something really hard in your life um I hope that I can instill I'll just a little bit of Hope in you and um God bless you all thank you for watching and I will see you all in my next video bye everybody

Channel: Mom2Three

Views: 5,840

Keywords:

Id: KdpkZXoXNs8

Length: 19min 3sec (1143 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 11 2024