I'm a pisces, but I had cancer!

Hello friends, as you know from my past post, I was supposed to start chemo today. SPOILER ALERT- I did not! Greg, my mom and I got up early, piled into the car, and drove to the breast center on the UES (yes, that's what they call it). They make you do a finger prick to test your blood count, and then the oncologist examines you. My doctor was concerned that my abdomen was still bugging me from the fertility treatment. Surprisingly, she hadn't had many patients who had done fertility preservation prior to starting chemo. So to be extra cautious, she called the OBGYN, and had me do a second EKG and an X-ray of my abdomen. Meanwhile, Bela, my MIL, surprised me and showed up to hang with us, which was very sweet. Waiting on all these results took a while, so G got some sandwiches, and we hung out in the waiting area. Here we are waiting for the phlebotomist*: Long story short, the doctor wanted to give me a few more days to recover from my procedure. So we're on for Monda...

Hi friends, I know this blog has mostly been information transmission so far, but now for a feelings-y post. First things first– so far this week has been a bit rough. We did my fertility "egg retrieval" procedure on Monday AM, which went well (Yay!). But after, I was feeling really bloat-y and in pain, so we came home and were just hanging out on the couch. Then the landlord who will be renting my parents a crash pad in our building during my treatment came by with an offer to show us the apartment. I told G I could scheme it if we took it easy, so we took the elevator up there, nice and easy. But at the end of our little walk through, I told Greg that I wasn't feeling well and wanted to go home. Next thing I knew, I woke up propped up on a mattress on the floor. Turns out I fainted twice, back-to-back. Was in and out. Tried to go back downstairs, and fainted a third time before making it back to our apartment. Greg decided we should call the EMT, and we spent our Memori...

Happy Memorial Day everyone (ou joyeux fêtes des mères si vous etes en France!) I had a great day out at the Basile's on Long Island. Hung out with lovely people and ate Nicole and Marilu's delicious rice and beans and Jorge's always excellent steak: The menu fit in well with following doctor's orders to eat tons of protein in advance of tomorrow, which is E-day: embryo extraction! It will be a very quick procedure- Grisha will drive us into the city, and we should be in and out of the doctor's office within an hour. So once that's wrapped, what happens next? Well, as promised, here's the plan:  On Thursday, I go into the hospital for my first chemotherapy treatment. I keep joking that it feels like the first day of school, but much shittier. From what I can understand, basically I go get my blood drawn, see my oncologist, then sit in a chair for 1.5 hours and get the cancer-killing meds via an IV. MSK only has private chemo rooms, which is super ...

So you may be wondering- if I was diagnosed nearly two weeks ago, why am I not starting to get this cancer OUT of me already? Well, for a few reasons. First, it took a few days to get me in to see the Sloan Kettering doctors. But the MAIN  reason is because of this thing called fertility preservation - we’re trying to get some good eggs out of me so we can freeze them and hopefully have kiddos after all this, just in case chemo fucks with my reproductive system. I won’t go into the details of how I’ve been shooting myself up with hormones here, but the long and short of it is that, a) science is cool, b) everything will wrap up on Monday, and c) hopefully we’ll be freezing lots of potential Val and Greg’s for future use. Here is a photo of one of the needles I've been sticking in my belly every night:  It's a little stressful to mix the meds together, but the shots don't hurt at all! After this wraps on Monday, chemo treatment starts on May 30th. So what’s the dea...

I know a lot of you have heard this whole story of my diagnosis, but I figured I would outline it here for posterity. First things first– how did I even find out that I have cancer? Well, way back in Spring 2018, Greg and/or I felt a little lump in my right breast. Given that Greg's mom is a breast cancer survivor, he was extra vigilant about urging me to check it out. As part of my PhD student health insurance, if I want my medical services to be covered, I have to first go see a doctor at the Columbia University Student Health Center, who then can decide whether to refer me out for care. If any of you have been to a university health center, you may know that you go in with a cough and come out thinking you're pregnant. Not exactly the best kind of service for a goddamn 30-year-old woman. So, I went to the health center in April 2018 with a little cold, and also because I needed a referral for a dermatologist (when you live 1.5 hours from campus, you try and consolidate a...

Here's a photo of G and I at my first appointment at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, where I'll be getting my treatment for stage 3 breast cancer (right boob, in case you were wondering).  Going to see what G keeps calling the "best of the breast" here. More soon!