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...

Hi!

Thank you all so much for caring about my health and wanting to walk alongside my family and I as we go through this journey. All of the encouragement, texts, calls, flowers, treats, etc mean more to me than you could ever know. I know I haven't called or texted many of you back, but please know that I have read everything and REALLY appreciate your thoughts, prayers and love.

This was not a journey I signed up for, and I'll be honest that at times I feel scared to death. Other times, though, I feel at peace knowing that this is my new reality, and I'm going to tackle this one day at a time.

I know that when things like this happen, many people around them don't know the "right" words to say, or how to act. For me, it's not a taboo subject, and it just feels good to know people care. So please don't feel weird or think you need to avoid the subject (although sometimes I'm talking through my tears).

Kenny and I just went to a genetic counseling appointment. Since I'm under 40 th...

We just spent about 3 hours at the surgeon's office and just arrived home. We got many of our questions answered, and at least have a better idea of the road we are about to travel.

She told us that the clinical diagnosis is Stage 2b Invasive Ductal Carcinoma. She also guesses that Kimberly has actually had cancer in her body for "years". The MRI showed that there is more cancer in the breast than the tumor which was biopsied.

We have a big choice to make: have surgery (mastectomy) first followed by chemotherapy, or begin chemotherapy first with surgery after.

The surgeon thinks that perhaps chemotherapy can shrink up the tumor in the breast and help with the cancer in the lymph nodes paving the way for a much easier surgery afterwards.

So, the next step is to meet with the oncologist to get his opinion, and then we can make a decision.

Also, since Kimberly is under 40, they want her to go to a genetic specialist on Thursday to run some tests for a certain gene which will determin...

Hi all,

Thanks for signing up to get updates about Kimberly's progress!

She feels overwhelmed already with the amount of encouragement coming in and the amount of people interested in following along with her on her journey. I want to thank each of you for this because it makes her so happy.

There's not much news to report yet. Yesterday was her MRI. If you didn't know it already, Kim is highly claustrophobic, so I wasn't sure how she'd react to being shoved into a tube. Well, she handled it great! She actually said she could feel everyone praying for her... so cool.

Now, we wait until the doctor's appointment on Monday to hear about the results...

More later!

Kenny