Cancer is AGGRESSIVE.....Trying hard to be brave

Today was our appointment with our oncologist. And emotions are running ragged. When we arrived at our appointed they told us to valet our car. Joey was so nervous and trying to be so BRAVE. He has done city tours many times and driven people up to the Huntsman Center and told them about our amazing doctors and care that we have in Utah. And now here he was driving his wife up there to receive her treatment and he was so flustered that as he got out of the car he forgot to put the car in park and the car almost made it's way into the valet stand!!! But luckily for us we are always ready to laugh at our mistakes and realize there are sometimes when it is just hard to be Brave. 

We met our caretaker, Anne. And she is amazing!! She stayed with us for our entire visit. Our nurse, Rosie, met with us and our oncologist, Dr. John Ward. They were amazing. They reviewed our diagnosis with us and the word I heard said over and over was AGGRESSIVE. 

It made me want to cheer:

Be Aggressive.... B....E....Aggressive!!! 

It's like the cancer cells have little cheerleaders with black pom poms rooting the bad cells on. 

I have a grade 2 tumor and it is stage II B. Because it is aggressive we have to do a petscan on Friday to make sure it hasn't spread elsewhere in my body. If it has they can only try to get the cancer in remission but there is no cure. So I need my cheerleaders to start cheering with their pom poms (or praying):

We got spirit... We got class

We got spirit....Gonna kick cancer's @$#

And so it begins. We do an echocardiogram on Thursday to make sure my heart can take the chemo. And we meet with the surgeon after that. And the plan is we place a port surgically on Monday. This is because my chemo will be 18 weeks and I will be Herceptin as an infusion for a year. Within that time surgery will take place and once the tissues are healed from the surgery we will do radiation. Needless to say it will be a long year and I need all my cheerleaders to keep me Brave. Both Joey and I have cried together tonight. It is hard when you see the time frame and reality set in. (It did help our night that both of our fantasy football teams won!)

I think in my warped sense of organization and time I thought that having cancer would be just an item on my do list: go to work, buy groceries, drive the kids to practice, beat cancer..... I thought it would just smoothly fit in and that I could still do it all! But now I am facing three days already away from work and that is even before the first chemo treatment. They did say I would lose my hair in about 3-4 weeks.  So I need to go wig shopping this week..... Anne took us to see the chemo treatment room and it was all too real. 

But the day didn't end there. I went back to work to parent/teacher conferences and Joey went to take care of our kids. Tender mercy.... Holly, my sister, had dinner at my house before Joey got back from the doctors. And it was delicious and it just made it so much easier to fall into other when I finally got home.  I needed to come home and process with my husband as he looks into my eyes with tears welling up in puddles in the corners of his eyes as he tells me that he doesn't want to see me hurt. He doesn't want me to go through this. That he wishes he could take the cancer from me.  Don't you love that when you look into your husband's eyes you can feel the love just from how he looks at you...Tonight we are just holding our kids tight and leaning into each other. We need tonight and then tomorrow we will rally our cheerleaders and be brave once again.