Challenges

I've been having fevers for the last 24 hrs. Very low fevers, 100° tops, with chills and body aches like the flu. My flu shot was last Wednesday in the hospital, so it's too late for that to be the cause. I called my Mayo team last night, but since the surgical and drain sites look fine my surgeon's resident said it can't be anything serious. I wonder if I've managed to finally catch something from one of the kids. They really don't have much going on, though, and I managed to catch nothing from them for the 6 months I was on chemo..... so I wonder if maybe it's some infection in the drains.

That makes me a bit nervous, but I'm going in tomorrow because to have one of them removed. Drain #1 has been putting out less than 30 ccs for 3 days now, and I'm supposed to have it removed after it's done that for 2. My "real" appt. is Thursday. I will change it unless drain #2's output goes down tomorrow. (That one's been putting out closer to 45ccs. That's the lymph drain.) ANyway I will tell the doctor about the fevers and see if I can get some antibiotics -- or what she thinks of how it all looks. This is a new doctor for me, a surgeon at G-town who agreed to do follow up care for my Mayo surgery so I could come home. (It looks mostly fine, but there ARE these wierd symptoms....)

I was feeling so much better -- went for a 4 m walk with Joan yesterday -- but these new symptoms are a setback; now I've been mostly sleeping. (Good thing ALan's taking most of the week off.)

The other challenge is my Mayo Oncologist's recommendation. I haven't had the energy to write about this here before, but now I will try. My pathology findings were that the tumor had shrunk to half its original size, and the remaining tumor was almost 50% dead, and over 50% live tumor. So my Onc said that I have a choice, go forward with tamoxifen and radiation (which at the Mayo are done together ROUTINELY, btw) and keep our fingers crossed, or do 4 more rounds of chemo first.

He recommends taxol and carboplatin. That combo is approved for use with metastatic cancer and lung cancer and ONE other thing -- so there will be no problem with insurance, he says. However, we won't be able to measure how well it's working, because my breast tumor is gone -- so it's possible that we will be just losing time. However, the taxol worked -- albeit slowly -- and I have no reason to think it was done working. And the fact that it works with metastatic cancer is actually good -- because the POINT is to kill any micro tumors that might not have gotten killed during the course of the chemo.....

The challenge is, will my G-town oncologist go for it? And if she doesn't, what will I do then? Getting on a plane to go to Mayo 4 times to get the chemo seems a bit much....