Zero Residual Cranial Bandwidth

Team Beat Cancer ... Assemble!

 

Whenever people in my industry start a new job, the first few days of employment are always met with rhetorical questions like, "Drinking from the firehose, eh?" The analogy paints a vivid picture of violent overwhelm that probably is better suited to describe a person's first appointment with an oncologist.

On Tuesday, we met Dr. Liu-Dumlao for the first time. If it was just her, I think we would have been okay, but there were times that we felt like one of the sharks on Shark Tank. We sat in our chairs in the small examination room for about 3 hours and welcomed half-a-dozen different people through the door to give us their well-rehearsed spiel about their special part in the cancer treatment process.

For a few of those contestants, we wish we could have said "... and for that reason, I'm out." Just like the sharks.

By the end of it, we left with enough literature to fill a college course - that's not an exaggeration - and zero cranial bandwidth remaining.

Having said all of that, it seems like the crabby scheduling nurses aren't in the picture anymore. After we met with the surgical oncologist last week, we left with a list of scheduled scans and procedures. All of those appointments have now been moved to earlier dates - most of them tomorrow or Friday. Dr. Dumlao put her team of minions to the task of performing some scheduling miracles for us, and they all came through. Here's the list of all but one of the appointments we have coming up in the next week:

• Echo exam
• Psycho therapy
• Bone scan 1
• Bone scan 2
• CT scan
• Blood work
• Oncology appointment #2
• Central port
• Wig fitting (Tamara scheduled this one)

We've felt some intense anxiety about how fast we've seen the tumor grow with just the naked eye. After the mammogram it didn't seem like anybody was in a hurry. Now, with the biopsy results in front of the right people, it seems like everybody is in a hurry. On the one hand, its a little scary that everybody senses the urgency. On the other hand, its a relief that everybody else seems to get it now - we don't have time to sit around.

Prior to the appointment on Tuesday, we were hoping to get some clarity on why chemotherapy needs to come before surgery. Seemed to us that if the cancer hadn't spread to the lymph nodes, chemo would be unnecessary. Needless to say, we are really not looking forward to 6 months of chemo, and if at all possible, we wanted to avoid it.

Dr. No shot that hope down pretty quickly (jk, Dr. Dumlao is great ... but chemo is going to suck). There were some tears shed once we felt the finality of the recommendation and the inevitability of chemo. Nobody wants chemo and nobody wants to see their loved one go through it. The doctor said that the goal is to see complete pathological remission before surgery. I'm honestly not 100% on why that needs to be the process in Tamara's case, but the doctor is adamant that it's the best treatment plan available for triple-negative, BRCA+, grade 3, stage 3 breast cancer.

"Triple-negative breast cancer" is no joke. It doesn't respond to hormone treatment and, in Tamara's case, grows scary-fast. At the time of the mammogram, the tumor was 2.4" (6 cm) in diameter. that was 3 weeks after Tamara even noticed the lump. For reference, a tennis ball is about 2.5" in diameter. Knowing that it has grown since then is just crazy.

Tamara, at times, will do a self-check to gauge the size and is always shocked by what she's feeling. She then looks to me for validation, asking me to feel it and gauge for myself. Since the mammogram, I haven't been able to bring myself to give her that validation. Something about poking and prodding around the thing that is trying to kill my wife makes me want to hide in a hole. Luckily, Dr. Dumlao has no such reservations, and confirmed that the tumor now occupies most of the space in Tamara's upper breast. Yikes. Hurry. Please.

The one medical appointment that I left off the list above is the first chemo treatment. That is scheduled for Monday - even before the central port is installed. This first treatment will be done with a typical IV because we couldn't get the port installed early enough. We were told that the oncologist would likely want to move quickly with chemo, but dang! This all came at us so fast and I don't feel like either of us have had a chance to catch our breath. Worst of all, if said breath were to be caught, we'd just be giving this thing more time to grow. So ... new rule: no breath catching allowed.

Even so, we're hoping that we can fall into something resembling a routine once all the initial tests are done. I say that because this next week is going to be bananas, and if things are going to be like this for the whole 6 month treatment regimen, one of us is going to lose our marbles. The list of appointments above, now including Monday's chemotherapy treatment, are only half the story.

One of Tamara's bone scans will leave her "glowing" (i.e. radioactive) for a full 24 hours, during which time she'll need to be quarantined. Elianna's birthday is on Saturday, so Tamara will need to stay 3-feet away from all of us (especially the kids) until about midway through the birthday. Elianna is not pleased, but I think she's forgetting that I can make a pretty great breakfast, too.

The twins' birthday is next week, a couple days after Tamara's first chemo treatment and the day before the central port installation. That port will be installed surgically, which means she'll be unable to lift more than 10 lbs. for 3 weeks post-op. It's a good thing we have older kids who can hold a baby, or we'd be in trouble.

A couple days after the port installation is Evan and Nathan's birthday party. The good news is that it will mostly revolve around video game tournaments, which is my specialty. The bad news is that very little else about birthday parties is my specialty.

Dizzy yet? Me, too.

Regardless, we'll figure it out ... along with all the soccer practices & games, family pictures (scheduled urgently because Tamara will be losing her hair soon), church activities, and company retreats (yes, I'm supposed to be at a company retreat the same week that Tamara gets her port installed and the twins have their party). The point is, we'll figure it out. And if we don't, something will fall through the cracks and we'll move forward anyways. Remember? No breath catching!

There you have it! You're all caught up. Honestly, this is all terrible and I won't try to sugar coat it. But I would be ungrateful if I didn't acknowledge the generosity of so many people. From kind text messages, to mysterious Amazon deliveries that show up with items meant to make Tamara's treatment less horrible. Some of those packages have shown up with no name attached, so we can't thank you directly or by name, but thank you all the same. We love and appreciate you all and feel blessed to know you. God has some kind of plan cooking and I don't always like figuring out what's next. But I hope we can still acknowledge the little miracles that remind us that His hand is in the details.

Until next time ... here is a scan of the notes that Dr. Dumlao wrote down as she outlined the plan to us. If you understand it, feel free to reach out and help us understand it better. Kidding, I understand it ... mostly. But if you have any medical school under your belt, let me know what you think.

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