Life Updates

It's been SO long since I last updated this blog. I just saw my last post was in August 2023, when I was on a drug for my cancer called, Kisquali. I believe it was my 2nd line of treatment for Stage IV Metastatic breast cancer. Unfortunately, my most recent allopathic treatment, a chemo pill called Xeloda, seems to be failing and thus I will be moving on to a 5th line of treatment. More on that later.

We now have two teenagers. Abbey turned 13 in January and Luke turned 15 in October. I love these kiddos greatly. They are amazing! Drew is also amazing as always. he works hard at everything he does and is such a huge support and rock in our family.

Luke has been practicing driving since he has his learner's permit. He is also really busy with basketball, taking classes at Austin Community College and our Co-op in addition to homeschooling, and playing piano in the church youth worship band. He is excited to help lead worship at a church in South Austin this upcoming weekend for that church's DNOW (Disciple Now, an awesome event for students).

Abbey has been in many plays and musicals since I last posted. She also has been playing basketball, singing in choir and sometimes in the youth worship band at church. She loves creating--art, music, crafts and more. She continues to enjoy homeschooling--her favorite class is logic (Drew and I often say she would make an excellent attorney some day!) She has been taller than me since this summer; so, I am now the shortest person in our family.

I try to keep things as normal as possible for our family, despite having stage IV cancer. I don't want the kids to look back at our family time together and think mainly about the cancer. I try hard to plan fun adventures and give them lots of interesting experiences to enrich their lives. At times it can be really difficult because I have to be gone a lot to try to squeeze in all the complementary treatments I like to do for the cancer. Honestly, it is at many times overwhelming. For example, ideally, this is what I would do:

Hyperbaric Oxygen therapy: one hour in the chamber at least once per day (it actually is at least an hour an a half process though by the time you get up to pressure and then release the pressure). Ideally I would do this twice per day.

Ozone Insufflation: about 20 minutes per day

Red Light Therapy bed, PEMF, Cryotherapy and Lymphatic Massage at Upgrade labs: Would love to do this at least 3 times weekly. However, it takes about 3 hours each time with driving time. Thus, i can only do it when we I have a solid three hours of time block.

High Dose IV Vitamin C: need about 3 hours of time (including the driving time). Ideally this would happen three times per week.

Daily juicing: 45 minutes-an hour

Exercise: Daily, 30-60 minutes

Daily walks: 30-60 minutes

Infrared Sauna: an hour and 20 minutes, including driving time.

Supplements: Too many to name all throughout the day.

You get the picture. It can be overwhelming trying to do all this, as well as plan and prepare meals, homeschool the kids, take them to ALL the activities and things. All this on top of the most recent drug I was on, Xeloda, making me just feel terrible. Initially, I had so much nausea that I began dropping my supplements, because it was just too hard. I began Xeloda back in June 2024. It also caused the very painful hand and foot syndrome. My church home group began praying for my nausea and it worked! I could now think of food and eat. (Still the thought of taking supplements made me feel super nauseous, so I remained off of all of them.)  My feet then started feeling terrible---blisters, red hot, and peeling. It made it difficult and painful to walk, but I still pushed through and was able to continue walking every day. I visited MD Anderson for a second opinion on things in August 2024. The doctor there specializes in patients with breast cancer that have become treatment resistant. I felt like that was me, since I was already on my 4th line of treatment in just two years since being diagnosed stage IV. He recommended a different drug as my next line of therapy after Xeloda, vs what my local oncologist recommended. I would prefer to move to that drug, vs the Enhertu, which is an IV drug, administered every few weeks (my hair would all fall out and other patients have reported other nasty side effects). So, I would prefer another pill vs moving on to all the IV drugs.  

My October 2024 PET scan showed Xeloda was working overall, which made me very happy. My doctor moved me to a 7 days on the drug, 7 days off the drug schedule (vs two weeks on, one week off). My home group also prayed for my feet. Miraculously, my feet improved drastically. However, now my awful pain was in my hands/fingers.

Fast forward to my most recent PET Scan: January 30, 2025. It wasn't good. I had progression everywhere. My cancer is still in many places in my bones, liver and lymph nodes. However, the new large area in my right upper femur is cause for concern, due to the stabilization it provides to my body. I also have a fairly large area of cancer in my left hip area (which was almost gone on my October PET scan.) And my liver has tons of cancer in it. I have learned things can change very drastically, very quickly. Just on January 8th, my tumor markers showed great improvement and I was feeling pretty well in my bones. Then, on January 22, the markers shot WAY up, higher than they have ever been and the PET scan looked awful. I really pray things can improve that rapidly as well.

So, what's the plan now? My local oncologist wants to do radiation on my right femur and left hip, since they provide much needed stabilization to the body, It is super important those areas improve quickly. In addition, I am awaiting insurance approval to switch to a new drug, Elacestrant. My doctor said it will most definitely cause nausea, so I am not super excited about that. In the meantime, I have an appointment at MD Anderson on Tuesday next week to make sure that doctor still agrees with that plan in light of the recent tumor markers and scans. In addition, I am going to try to add my supplements and off-label drugs back in to help my body in other ways and try to squeeze in as many of those therapies I mentioned above each week. 

How can you pray for me and my family?

• Please pray for the Lord to use the radiation to eliminate the cancer from those two large areas. In addition, please pray for no negative side effects from that.
• Please pray for approval of this drug if the Lord wills. And, if approved, I pray for swift removal of my cancer through it and the other natural treatments I am doing, as well as no terrible side effects. I really need good nutrients in my body and being nauseous makes that difficult.
• Please pray that I can find time to fit all of the helpful healing treatments into my day.
• And ultimately, please pray for healing and removal of all cancer from my body.

I am so thankful for the prayers of all of you who read and pray (and for the family who donates financially as well to the alternative treatments, unasked and regularly, just to encourage those to continue and to relieve some of that burden--even though they have health burdens of their own--continuing to pray for you.) 

When I was regularly blogging and posting my prayer requests back in 2012-2013 when I was diagnosed with Stage 3C breast cancer, I could LITERALLY feel the prayers. I was in such a state of peace and had so much joy. And I saw SOOOOOO many answers to those prayer requests I posted. I have been so out of time, that it has been overwhelming thinking of keeping everyone updated, and feeling like I didn't want to burden others with my requests. But, I have been encouraged by others that I need to post. I apologize for the length of this post (and for possible grammar/typo errors---literally just going to type this without editing and post since I have limited time). Future posts will not be this long---it's just there was a lot of catching up to do.  Thank you, friends!