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By TEAM ANISSA

October 17^th, 2014

Week 12 & 13

October 6-17

We arrived home to a quiet house and were greeted by Anissa’s close friend of 20 years, Tanna and Anissa’s Mom, Gayle. The kids were both across the street at a friend’s birthday party and would pop in every so often to check on Mom in between running around with their friends.

It didn’t take long as Anissa settled home and into bed.

A handful of years ago, Anissa attended one of those “home” shows at a convention center. In a single purchase, she would single handedly alter the course of her recoveries. Recovery from both childbirths and now recovery from her recent bi-lateral mastectomy.

I present to you – our Temper-pedic adjustable bed. I know you’re probably thinking of craftmatic adjustable – and yes, it’s just like that but with out the old people. You have no idea just how much this bed, with all of its “material designed for NASA” magical adjustableness (yes, I just made up that word) helped during recovery from surgery. Since the day of surgery Anissa has slept on her back, and most of the time at a 15º to 30º angle. Try doing that with pillows only.

A steady stream of pain medication and sleep would be on tap for the better part of the next 2 weeks. Most of these two weeks are fuzzy in memory, similar to the foggy days we walked through when we first had kids. (probably the reason for writing all this down). There are good days and not so good days. There are days when Anissa is up and about – taking walks outside with a fair amount of strength and energy and then there are other days when she’s not up to moving at all. Right now she has one job – to heal.

While Anissa was resting and healing, the kids still had their sports and schoolwork. The day after Anissa came home from the hospital Isabella had a softball game. Our good friend and neighbor, Ellen (who has a daughter on Bella’s team) was the one who arranged for the breast cancer awareness ribbon stickers for Bella and her teammates to wear. I was a bit emotional to begin with, and seeing these girls out there on the field with all their pink was beyond touching and sweet, especially when you are dealing with it first hand. They won that game and I have no doubt it was from the power of those pink ribbons.

We’ve been working hard to keep some normalcy for the kids. We’re also trying to see what the new routine here at home is. We’re also waiting for a call to hear the pathology reports. I’ve been with, next to, near, or even a conference call away from Anissa for every visit, test, and conversation with doctors when it relates to her cancer. The one time I leave the house for a photo session – the Dr. calls to discuss the the surgical pathology results. Dr. Chang called while Anissa was sleeping and the good doctor wasted no time on her call in getting right to the point. While Anissa tried getting out from under the cloud of sleep, she and her mom scrambled for a pen and paper. The doctor shared with them that the results were not exactly what she was hoping for…Anissa’s type of cancer was not only invasive ductal as we had originally thought but it was lobular as well. The size of the tumors on the left side were much larger than what was seen on the MRI and PET scans. And finally, of the 6 sentinel lymph nodes that were removed, 3 tested positive for cancer. Based on this – Anissa is now at Stage 3.

Eight days after surgery Anissa was scheduled for more tests: a bone scan and another pet scan. Now that the lymph nodes were involved we needed to know if it went beyond just those. So, on Friday, October 10th – we headed to UCLA and crammed in as many tests and Dr. visits as we could.

The day started rather early and by 8am Anissa was getting injected with a radioactive dye for use three hours later during her bone scan. From there we made our way upstairs to Dr. F’s office where he was kind enough to make time in between his surgeries so he could do a post operative wound check. Based on the fluid output he was able to remove Anissa’s two drains as well. It was still early in the day – and she still had a bone scan and another post-op appointment with Dr. Chang. This was the first day in one week where Anissa had was going for any extended length of time and it was exhausting her.

The final appointment of the day was with Dr. Chang. Based on the subject matter, I’m glad we saved this for last. In not so many words, we were told that based on the tumor size and the number of lymph nodes which tested positive, Anissa would require another surgery to remove axillary lymph nodes. In addition to this Dr. Chang explained that Anissa’s situation put her right over the edge of the national guidelines and because of this she would require chemotherapy (which we knew) as well as radiation. This was a bit of a huge blow and certainly took the wind from the sails.

The following week was rather mellow with only a PET scan scheduled for Monday and a followup visit with Anissa’s oncologist on Tuesday. At this point, I would consider a professional patient at UCLA. We know the shortcuts to the offices, when to make appointments, when to beat traffic and how to get the most done while there. The PET scan was just like the bone scan but with a different radioactive injection and that meant she couldn’t be around anyone for an hour prior to the scan. So while she sat with her iPhone waiting I head off to pick up a new prescription.

By now, the surgical pathology report was in and Dr. Berkowitz had a full picture of what he was treating. The tumors were larger than expected, 3 lymph nodes tested positive and another surgery was scheduled for October 23rd. With this information Anissa was handed the outline for her upcoming course of treatment: 6 chemo treatments (TC for those wondering), every 3 weeks for a total of 18 weeks. This would begin mid-November.

Even with all the heavy weight of this information to process, Anissa headed into the weekend thinking about how chemo would cause hair loss and what her hair might look like if it were shorter.