Healthy cancer patient 9/2/16

So that is it.  I finished my last Herceptin today.  My husband, Tony, was yet again with me, keeping me company in the infusion room.  I met with my oncologist one last time until I meet with him in December.

Since this is fitness blog, I will keep cancer treatment history to brief.  I went to routine mammogram late August in 2015 and was diagnosed breast cancer on September 14.   Immediately the surgery to install medi-port and very first chemotherapy session was scheduled.  It was stage IIIB, believed that cancer cells are about to spread to other parts of body through lymph nodes.  For my kind of breast cancer, the strategy was to shrink the tumor with Herceptin as much as possible before the surgery.  I was given Herceptin along with traditional chemotherapy.  The regimen was every three weeks, for six rounds, then surgery, and radiation therapy for 6 weeks and Herceptin for entire year.

So I finished the entire year of Herceptin today.  Hurray!

People wonder and doctors research what cause people to have cancer.  While it is important for doctors to research, it was not the important question to be answered for me.  My department consists of just me and I didn't have substitute to take over my classes.  Soon I realized, taking the medical leave for spring semester is also not an option because of the same reason.  On chemo Fridays, I gave an assignment to submit over email and showed up next week to go on with teaching.

Soon after the diagnosis, I cut the hair short and started wearing hats.  I told about the diagnosis to my department chair and secretary and to students to ask for cooperation. Students grew up fast to be responsible.  My husband and his company gave maximum support.  My family backed me up 100%.  I cannot thank them enough.  Without their support, I could not be alive to welcome this day.

Cancer doesn’t discriminate anybody.  I considered myself fairly physically active at the time.  I was training for a Duathlon event in October and maintained my running fitness with early morning runs and cycling with mainly trainer rides with Spinervals programs.  You may think if I got cancer, it doesn’t matter if you try to keep yourself healthy or not.  You are getting cancer healthy or not.  The message I want to send with this blog entry is you should keep yourself healthy as much as you can, no matter you get cancer or not.  How healthy you are during cancer treatment does make a difference.

The target therapy worked miracle and my cancer was shrinking, my breast surgeon thinks, after very first chemotherapy.  My doctors agreed to have the surgery during the winter vacation by breaking up six rounds of chemo treatment into four and two because my MRI came clear.  But if you visit the infusion room, you end up seeing a patient waiting for assigned medicine not coming.  Often we over heard the nurse explaining that they are not going to be able to give the treatment as planned because of this number or that number is too low.  I had a friend, who I was actually hoping to take over my spring class, who didn’t tell me she, herself had cancer.  She passed away before spring semester is over.  She didn’t pass away from cancer.  Her body couldn't take the treatment.  Tony said, when he explains I have cancer, people often shared their family/friends didn’t survive cancer.

I gave up on weight training and running thinking I would be always dizzy from chemotherapy, but I kept riding a bicycle on trainer using Spinervals program.  Since I have power meter and the consistency of doing the same program gave me an idea of how my fitness was changing.  I managed to do easy workouts up till October.  November came and my workout became more scarce, feeling the accumulation of chemo.  The end of the fall semester was madness trying to finish up with semester responsibilities and preparing for the surgery that immediately followed.  Spring semester was tough.  I was not strong enough to do easy workouts that I normally do.  I was doing no agenda spinning and Spinervals workouts for newcomers.  After six rounds of chemo are done, I started to back up to easy workouts, but I could only maintain recovery power output.  But I gradually gained strength and about the time spring semester is over, I started to dip into harder workouts and I decided to redo some of Spinervals training program that I watched my friends complete off-season.  I thought I was in 2013-2014 shape before the second reconstruction surgery, which I am still recovering from. 

During the cancer treatment, there were many points that the fact I didn’t smoke, I didn’t have diabetes or any other serious health problems helped treatments moving forward.  The fact I was active helped recovery from treatments and surgeries.  Exercise is what I enjoy and together with keeping my classes going, it kept me focused doing well rather than dwelling and lamenting with side effects. 

As you can go way back on this blog, I was never active until mid-30’s.  I was a lot bigger when I first came to the US for graduate school.  If you are young and healthy, you don’t think about being healthy very much.  I understand that.  And if you have family, work and various responsibilities, it is hard to find time to dedicate to activities to be well.  But you may realize sometime, being healthy should be a bigger priority above many things. 

Now that I survived cancer in my 40’s, I look at life priorities a little differently.  I hope I mellowed down a little bit and became kinder to others.  I am grateful for what I have and whom I have around me.  You can never take anything for granted and there is no guarantee what you think keeps going is in fact to keep going.  I take more pleasure in simple things.  Having time together with my husband, family and the fact I have the teaching I enjoy with wonderful students I have.  I feel like entire season went just watching others train, participate in events and compete in races, but once I recover from this surgery, I will be happy that whatever physical activity I can.  I will move back up and it will help me keeping healthy.