This past week started with the last public holiday for the summer (Labour Day). Judith started school on Tuesday and managed to get all her courses for this year sorted out. She also started field hockey! Yeah! Stephen has gone back to Kingston and the rest of us back to work.
On Thursday we had our appointment with Dr. Doherty at Sunnybrook Hospital to discuss with her how the next stage of treatment is going to be managed. She had a good look at the initial and then subsequent Gallium and CT scans and confirmed for us that Judith's cancer is "chemo sensitive" meaning that it is responding well to the treatment. She spent a long time with us explaining the different risks involved in choosing one route or the other and then it was basically up to Judith to decide what to do. The short explanation is: with chemo alone, the chances of a relapse are slightly higher; shorter chemo followed by radiation has the increased risk of breast cancer at a later stage especially in females under age 30 - the reason for this is that with radiation they hit the areas that are affected by the cancer which in Judith's case are close to the breast.
On Friday she had her 4B chemo and a good discussion with Dr. Zibdawi, the chief oncologist here at Southlake Hospital. Judith had already decided that increased chemo without the radiation was the preferred route and our discussion with him confirmed that. He spent a good deal of time explaining what would happen should she have a relapse - in the end it is important that you are able to make an informed decision.
A relapse involves extra chemo, harvesting of one's own stem cells, followed by high dose chemo which means a few weeks in hospital and then receiving your own stem cells back again.
A bit later, while Judith was receiving her chemo, a young man came in who is now starting this procedure and it was good speaking to him. Although he gave a very sombre description of the process, he himself was very upbeat about his prospects.
The rest of this weekend has gone well. We are back to school and work tomorrow. Other news is that Sean has a job at Milestones which he is really happy about.
Love from all of us.
Ingrid.
