I can't believe how quickly this summer has flown by. We are nearly into August, which means all of our regular activities will be starting back up soon. Abbey attended a fun camp last week at a local church, which culminated in a musical, in which she was one of the many actors. She had a blast of course!
She is at pre-teen camp this week through our church, and from the photos it looks like she is having an amazing time there as well. She and a friend were so cute--they planned matching outfits and hairstyles for each day of camp.
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| One of the sponsors at camp sent me this photo. |
A couple of weeks ago Luke attended an architecture camp at the University of Texas and he really enjoyed it.
Health updates:
For the past month I have been on two new drugs and a lot of new supplements. The two drugs are through my oncologist. She swapped out Verzenio for Kisqali (ribociclib) and exemestane (aromatase inhibitor) for fulvestrant. The fulvestrant is just annoying. I have been going in every two weeks for injections in my buttocks for the fulvestrant. It is EXTREMELY painful and it takes two nurses. The needles are so long and thick and the liquid is also very thick. One nurse gets on each buttock and injects the medication slowly over about a minute. When they finish, my legs don't want to walk and my butt hurts and has knots on it for about a week. But, I guess the bright side is that I don't have to take another pill every day. I am tolerating the Kisqali pretty well, although I am only taking one out of the three pills per day. Even at that amount though, my white blood count and neutrophil count is just tanked. So, I have to be careful and not be around anyone who is ill.
In addition to the allopathic medicine, I am taking a number of supplements. I had an amazing visit with the functional medicine doctor at the clinic that I go to to get my weekly high dose vitamin C infusions. We reviewed the results of some testing that I did through the clinic. The test is called Nutreval through Genova. I discovered so many deficiencies in my body. I'm guessing the cancer in body has required it to need additional nutrients. My detoxification pathways are not working well, and it was cool to see how certain missing nutrients/minerals could break down the entire cycle. The crazy thing is one of the things I was low in was vitamin A--and that is probably the nutrient I intake most out of all of them, with my daily juicing of carrots and eating so many sweet potatoes, etc. But, my body wasn't able to use those nutrients with the deficiencies in other areas. So, we have added a few supplements and taken some away and hopefully this will correct the issues. I am also slowly trying to increase my weekly high dose vitamin C dosage. The clinic ordered a test for me that I will hopefully be able to take at my next appointment--this test will assess whether the dose of vitamin C I am getting at the clinic is raising my plasma vitamin C enough to be effective at killing the cancer. Maybe in my next post, I will share my supplement regimen...it is a lot!
We are excited we were selected to be one of 28 families out of 300-350 nominees to attend the Leslie's Week retreat at the Dollywood DreamMore Resort in Pigeon Forge, TN. It is a special retreat for Stage IV metastatic breast cancer survivors and their family. Our hotel at the resort is completely paid for and they are even gifting us tickets to Dollywood. We are so excited, as we have wanted to bring our family to the smokey mountains for vacation for a while now. We are excited to explore! I will try to post some photos when we get back home.
Thanks everyone for your continued prayers! I am praying that God uses all these treatment modalities to completely heal my body....not just of the cancer, but healing my immune system so that it works well from now on!
