There is always hope

Well, I had my left lung PleurX catheter placed on Tuesday.  The staff was amazing, I was able to have my most favorite nurse Serena and my sister Robyn was able to be there so all in all things went well despite not wanting to have the darn thing. The only hiccup was that my platelets were only 33 and they needed to be at least 50 to do the procedure.  So, they ended up ordering 2 units of platelets.  When they called the blood bank, they said they were out of platelets and they were holding the only platelets they had for the heart surgery patients. After calling the red cross and making some deals they were able to find me the platelets I needed to be able to continue. Thank you to all the donors out there that are willing to donate - I have needed a lot of blood products lately and wouldn't be able to make it through without the selfless donors.  If you can be a donor I would ask that you please donate - it is a great and easy way to be a hero!

Here is my most favorite nurse at St. Marks - Serena hanging my platelets after waiting 4 hours for them!

Lots of waiting...

More waiting....

So glad my sister could be there for me.  She is awesome!

 My left lung is going crazy - in the past week it has been drained three times for a total of 2200cc's of fluid which is way more than my right lung ever put out.  The recovery has been a little tough - it never feels good to have a hose sticking out of your chest wall.  I have had meals brought in, treats dropped off, texts and calls and some beautiful tulips brought over.  I adore tulips, they are one of the sweetest little flowers ever.  I have the best friends and family!

This past week was my youngest son's birthday.  He is the sweetest boy.  He is always checking on me to see if I need anything.  He calls from work to see if he can pick up a drink or anything I might need.  He makes sure I'm comfortable and well taken care of.  He makes my heart so happy.  He just turned 17 - I can hardly believe this little boy is 17!! I love you Dylan with my whole entire heart!!

Loving this oreo cake!

Breakfast at Black Bear Diner...his favorite breakfast joint.

This is one of my favorite pictures of my bubba. 

Two weeks ago I had the opportunity to go to Time Out For Women in Layton.  It was such a great weekend with great people.  There were amazing speakers and beautiful music that really touched my heart.  I was able to meet one of the singers - Nathan Pacheco.  His voice is like butter - I could listen to him sing all day long.  He was also so genuine and kind when we spoke.  What a nice person...so humble and cute!

Love that smile!

Signing my CD

Good friends...great weekend!

I was also able to have lunch with a good friend Holly and her amazing son Spencer who was treated for Rhabdomyosarcoma and is a walking miracle.  Holly always has a way of filling up my love bucket. She gets me and always knows what I need to hear.  I love her and her family so much.  I'm so glad our paths have crossed.  I know she is my sister...I just cannot have enough sisters, that's for sure!

I just love this momma!!

So....now here comes the hard part.  Let's just start off with this statement:

Enough said...

I'm so tired of cancer, tired of people being diagnosed with it, tired of it ruining people's lives, tired of it turning things upside down, just so tired.  

I saw Dr. Litton yesterday.  We have come to the conclusion that my chemo 1- isn't working, and 2-has become too toxic to my bone marrow.  The frustrating part of it too is that it isn't very vascular where my pleural effusions are so the chemo can't get to the cancer cells in the fluid around my lungs. It isn't possible to put chemotherapy in that pleural space or in the lungs. So we talked about several things - and came up with a plan.  

1- We will get a CT scan of my chest, abdomen and pelvis so we have a starting point of reference      from here on out.

2- We will start my third line of chemo which is called Eribulin or Halaven. It typically has all the        same side effects of most chemo. Nausea, vomiting, hair loss, mouth sores...all the good stuff. I've      read that after 3 lines of chemo basically nothing will work...and I'm running out of chemo that            is even effective on triple negative breast cancer.  I said to Dr. Litton "so we are coming to the end      then..."  His response was "I'm worried that we are."  These are words you don't want your                  Oncologist to ever say. :(  I have had a hard time processing our conversation and end up crying          every time I think about it.  It is becoming ever so real, and while I have tried to really stay in              reality, this seems so surreal. I would love to crawl up in a little hole of denial and live there for a        while.  I told Dr. Litton I was a little disappointed because I had heard he was the "bone marrow          whisperer" and since I was a patient of his, my bone marrow should be recovering without                  problems. He laughed and said, "well I'll whisper and pray that your bone marrow will recover -          whatever works!!"  I just love that guy...I'm sure he thinks I'm a dork.  Even though we had hard          news I still try to find some kind of humor to get through.  

3-Dr. Litton said he has some homework to do.  He is going to try to find a clinical trial for me to try. I know that this won't cure me, but if I can help with forwarding research and it gives me a little         more time, I ought to try it. If he can't find a trial he will try to find some off label cocktail that           might work for a while.  If you were to look at me from the outside except for the oxygen and my       super short hair, you would never even know anything was wrong.  This all seems so weird to me.

4-I get to take off 2 weeks from treatment so my bone marrow can have a break and fully recover for the next step.  I always like taking breaks, but then my mind goes crazy knowing all those cancer       cells are multiplying, dividing and multiplying more.  I knew I never liked math...

I've tried to prepare for this but this quote is so right...it's much different when you get to this point.

We are not giving up!

I've got a lot of work to do these next few months to put everything in order. I pray that I will feel good enough to do the things I need to do to create some lasting memories for my kids and family. We still have a lot of hope, maybe the clinical trial will yield some good results - you never know. Thank you for all the support, love and prayers on mine and my family's behalf.  We feel them and we love and appreciate you!

Be brave, my heart. Have courage, my soul.

Tiffany