For those of you who didn’t see Kimberly’s post on social media, this week marked the final chemotherapy treatment.

Traditionally the first 10 days following treatment are really bad, so we’re right in the thick of that now.  

The silver lining is that hopefully this is the last time she’ll ever have to go through these horrible chemo symptoms.

It is definitely a cause for celebration that she passed this milestone in her treatment, but the road ahead in her cancer journey is still very long and painful.

The next milestone is double mastectomy surgery in mid-September.

Following surgery, she’ll get about a 6-8 weeks to let her body recover, and then she’ll start radiation.  This will consist of going into the radiation center daily (yes, EVERY day, M-F) for 6 weeks to radiate her chest to make sure rouge cancer cells are not still present.

Then, the plan is in the Spring to have another surgery (a major 12-hour long one) for breast reconstruction.

The road is long and tiring, bu...

It’s been several weeks since we emailed out an update on Kimberly.  I guess you could say neither her or I have really felt like trying to put into words how things have been going, but I’ll give it a shot now.  

Nearly 5 months have passed since she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and it’s easy to say that these months have been the most difficult of our lives.

For me, watching the woman you have loved since high school have her life completely flipped upside down and have to endure constant physical and emotional suffering is horrible.  

Standing beside her while it sinks in that her life and body will never be the same again, even after she slays the big C (which I’m convinced she will)…

Knowing that for the rest of her life, every ache or pain will prompt the thought, “is the cancer back but this time with a vengeance?”…

Still wishing there was something more I could do to help or take some of the pain of the situation away…

The past couple months have been a little like t...

Difficult times can define you, diminish you, or develop you. YOU DECIDE. - Jim Kwik

It’s been a while since I have updated everyone.  I’ve had many side effects since my first chemo treatment which haven’t been fun at all.  I know no one ever said this road would be easy, and it sure isn’t.  

For the first two weeks after the treatment, each day presented itself with a new side effect which I had to learn to cope with.  Aside from the ones I mentioned in my last post, one of the ones that I have been struggling with is numbness/tingling in my fingers.  It makes it hard to feel things and I drop a lot of things too.  It’s also hard to hold things in my hands for a long time.

The past 5 days, though, things have being pretty consistent with no new symptoms popping up! I have started to feel like myself again and have more energy.

This past week was an especially hard week as I started losing my hair bit by bit.  First it was sporadic and I’d notice strands of hair here and there.  T...

After having my first round of chemo last Tuesday, I’ve learned that things never go as planned. Sure, the doctor laid out what symptoms I was “supposed” to get and which days they “should” show up, but I realized that everybody is different and I can’t rely on that.

On the day of the treatment, everything seemed to be ok overall aside from exhaustion. That night, though, I found out that I couldn’t get a wink of sleep. One of the chemo drugs is a steroid which aided in me laying there feeling exhausted but not able to fall asleep.

Early the next morning, I was feeling nauseous. I went back to the oncologist to get my immunity booster shot only to have him tell me that I shouldn’t be feeling that nauseous already and that I need to go get an IV hydration infusion and different anti-nausea meds.

Back to the treatment center we went and sat for a few hours while I got the IVs of meds and hydration along with the immunity booster shot. Several hours after my shot, severe bone aches set...

Today was Kim’s 1st round of chemotherapy out of (most likely) 6 total which will take place every 3 weeks.

After meeting with the oncologist, we went over to the treatment center where she had some blood taken for testing, and then an IV put in. Over the next 4 hours, she sat in a recliner and was pumped full of all kinds of stuff (yes that’s a medical term).

It was weird watching the effects of each of the different drugs kick in one at a time. One gave her a strong metallic taste in her mouth. Another made her feel dizzy and tipsy, and another made her achy.

She did great and handled the whole thing really well!

Afterwards, she said she felt like a truck hit her and felt kind of nauseous too. She slept for a bit and then was able to get up and catch most of Josiah’s baseball game. That’s how much of a trooper she is.

Tomorrow morning we go back so she can get a shot which will help her immune system, and then we wait for the next treatment in 3 weeks.

Of course everybody handl...

Super quick update since many of you are waiting on the edge of your seat to hear how this morning’s oncologist appointment went:

This was the first appointment in the process where we left with better news than we entered with! This Big C journey is still going to be painful and grueling, but we did learn that yesterday’s MRI showed that the spots on Kimberly’s adrenal glands are NOT cancer.

So armed with that news, she can now begin chemotherapy (right after Easter) knowing that the cancer hasn’t spread on a macro level beyond the breast and lymph nodes.

Kenny

P.S. From time to time, Kimberly is using her site as a place to chronicle her thoughts on the journey which I won’t send an email out about. For example, last night she had a great post about her day yesterday. You can always check those out on the updates section of her website.

One thing this process is teaching me is to be ready for anything, and don't think that all plans are set in stone.

Even though Kim doesn’t have her appointment with the oncologist until Tuesday, she got a call from him today.  He said that the PET scan showed some abnormalities on both adrenal glands above her kidneys.  He had us schedule an MRI for Monday morning to take a closer look.

This MRI is the “traditional” kind in a tube, and it is at the Newport Beach facility as opposed to the newer Irvine one.  Please keep her in your thoughts and prayers!

We still have the appointment with the oncologist on Tuesday so hopefully he'll be able to give us lots more info then.

Thanks,

Kenny

Hi, quick update tonight about Kimberly’s PET/CT scan:

We want to celebrate as many mini (and major) victories as possible during this whole journey. I chalk today up as a victory.

There are two imaging facilities that Kimberly’s oncologist likes to use for PET/CT scans… One in Newport Beach, and the other in Irvine.  Traditionally, I’d guess that the Newport Beach one would have better equipment with more modern technology, but we were pleasantly surprised otherwise today.

The technician at the Irvine location today where we went told us that they have brand new scanning equipment which is way better than what they have in Newport Beach.  The tube was much smaller (in a good way), quieter, and faster than the alternative.  It turns out that this quick camera could do the entire body scan in 15 minutes (as opposed to the 1 hour+ that we had heard prior).  I was also able to be in the imaging room with her which was an added bonus.

The appointment got off to a rocky start when they ...

Hello,

Thank you again for wanting to be a part of my journey and walk this difficult road with me!

Tomorrow mid-morning I will be going in for a PET/CT scan to see if the cancer has spread to any other parts of my body. I'm not going to lie but this scan has me a little more anxious than my MRI. I will need to be in there for an hour. I know it's a bigger tube but for me it's still a tube where I can't move and have to lie facing upwards this time. Before I have the scan they will inject me with a radioactive substance and I will need to sit in the dark for an hour before I have the scan.

People have asked how am I doing. Overall, I'm in good spirits but I'm emotionally and mentally exhausted. It's a lot to take in and every day presents me with new challenges and being stretched beyond my comfort zone.

Right now the song "Find You Here" by Ellie Holcomb has been exactly what I have been feeling lately. Look at the words below.

Thanks!

Kim

It's not the news that any of us hoped...

Short update tonight: Today we had a phone consultation with the oncologist as he was at home recovering from his ankle surgery. It was good to get another doctor’s opinion on how we should go about slaying this big C.

After talking to him, we’ve decided to do chemotherapy first with surgery after that. Doing chemo first will hopefully shrink up the tumors in order to make the surgery that will follow less extensive and have better recovery time. Although the main tumor is 3cm in diameter, when you put all the spots of cancer that they see together, it is about 7 1/2 cm in diameter. Because of this, they want to treat it aggressively with chemo as the risk for spreading to other parts of the body is higher.

The plan is that Kimberly will have six rounds of chemo. She’ll go in every three weeks, and each time it will be 3 hours on an IV, followed by returning the next day for a shot that will help her immune system.

Treatment won’t start for another few weeks, but during that time, K...