How did I get here?

My life has pretty much always been a whirlwind.  I've never had that calm, secure life as a young adult. So when my life was looking up and I was finally happy, I never questioned it, I was enjoying it. I got re-married in June 2015 and had settled into a wonderful life with the two loves of my life, my daughter, Kaela, who just today, turned 13 and my husband Jonathan. I felt pretty much untouchable, life was good, I was happy, Kaela was excelling in school and stress was limited.

When December 2015 rolled around, it was a busy time, we were preparing for the holidays and I had seemed to come down with a cough, it was light at first, and yes, I was a smoker, smoked half a pack of cigarettes a day for the past 15 years, but had planned on quitting for New Years.  I just thought it was a cough and pretty much ignored it through the holidays.  We traveled to Vegas for New Years where it started to get worse.  I began to feel a heaviness in my right side of my chest and it was very concerning.  Googling symptoms didn't help, but bronchitis seemed to be the likely culprit.  Once we returned from Vegas, I quit smoking and went to Urgent Care, the Dr diagnosed me with bronchitis, put me on steroids and an inhaler and sent me on my way.  During the month of January, the symptoms got worse, my cough got worse, my chest ached a lot so I went back to a different Urgent Care, they did an X-ray and the Doctor stated I had Pneumonia even though I never had a fever.  Okay, well, let's take these antibiotics and knock this out of my system.  Except, it never went away, it got worse, the pain got worse, I would be in tears at times and it was scary.  At times I felt like it was better, then the next day it would be the same.  I went back the day before Valentine's Day to get another X-Ray done at the request of my Primary Care Doctor to make sure the Pneumonia was clearing up.  The Doctor stated it wasn't and in fact, looked a bit worse and after running some tests thought I might have a blood clot in my lung and she sent me to the Emergency Room.

The Emergency Room was depressing and after an X-Ray and a Cat Scan, the ER Doctor basically stated to me, you have lung cancer, here are some anxiety meds, pain meds, I have set you up for an appointment on Monday with an Oncologist, have a good night.  WOW!  You see, my grandfather passed from Lung Cancer and it was pretty quick, less then a year from diagnosis to death, so that was all that was in my head, I am going to die in less then a year.  I knew smoking was a bad choice of extra curricular activities, however, it was hard to quit.  What I didn't know is that down the road I would find out that smoking had nothing to do with my diagnosis - an even more shocking factor!

I told my mom what the ER doctor said, she was in shock and disbelief.  Jon and I went to the drug store to fill the prescriptions and we were both in shock. I remember sitting in the car in a fog, not really realizing it was real.  After that, I cried, and I cried and I cried so more.  I couldn't eat, I couldn't focus and I really just could not think clearly.  The only person I could think about was my daughter, how was I going to tell her, how am I going to deal with dying in less then a year? Kaela was with her father that weekend and although she knew of my urgent care visits and going to the hospital, I did not tell her everything immediately, because I needed to know more. All I could think about was why me? Why now? Why when everything was good, I was sooooo happy, life was positive for once, why was I being put through this?

Jon, my mom and I met with an Oncologist the next week who looked at my scans and saw inflamed lymph nodes in addition to whatever was in my lung and she stated Top 5 guesses of mine are all Lymphoma. This was a more positive possibility as Lymphoma in early stages is pretty easy to beat.  We then went to visit with the Thoracic Surgeon who stated he didn't even know if it was cancer after looking at my scans and stated it could just be an infectious disease.  We scheduled a biopsy to see what was going on.  My biopsy took place the next week and let me tell you, patience is not one of my strong points.  I was in pain as my lymph nodes were swollen so sitting up hurt, my lung hurt, my shoulder hurt, my back hurt, headaches constantly, life was just miserable, I couldn't sleep, and barely ate a meal a day.

The thoracic surgeon conducted a biopsy and the results were inconclusive from the day of the surgery, but they sent it for further testing to find out what was going on.  It gave me a glimpse of hope was the surgeon stated he couldn't state it was cancer or not.  The results came back and we went for our appointment to get the results.  Stage 4 Adenocarcinoma of the Lung with mets to the bones and further testing of an MRI showed 3 very small spots in the brain.  I broke down, literally, I couldn't even look at the scans and how the Oncologist was showing us where the disease was.  It was all a blur. I met with a Cancer Patient Navigator, her name is Brenda and as nice as she was trying to be, I was in shock and wasn't even paying attention to any word that she was saying, but in a nutshell, she was my go to person, she was there for me, for anything I needed.  One of the things I do remember the Oncologist stating was that they were going to take more blood and sent my biopsy for genetic mutation testing, because this stage of Lung Cancer for someone of my age is very uncommon, and that there are great treatments if indeed I did have a genetic mutation. Genetic mutations make it more likely for someone to develop cancer and my Oncologist believed that since I had this late Stage cancer, that genetic mutation was probably the reason behind it. At the time, I didn't understand it all, but down the road, it had a direct effect on my future.

I told Kaela that night. It was not something I wanted to do, but I knew I had to do it.  No parent ever wants to tell their child that they have cancer and don't know how long they have to live.  It was the most heartbreaking and sad moment I have ever had with my daughter and I've been through a divorce with her father so imagine that times a million.  Trying to be positive is hard when there are so many unknowns. All I wanted to do was hold Kaela in my arms and tell her everything would be ok, but I couldn't say that, because that would be a lie.  So all I could do was promise her that I would fight this, with every bone in my body.   I vowed to travel as much as possible with her, to start writing a book for her, to do everything I could as soon as possible because life is short.

My husband took this hard as expected.  We were just married in June and less then 9 months later I get diagnosed with Stage 4 Cancer, not exactly the honeymoon year we were looking forward to.  My husband is that man that wants to fix everything for me, he will do anything for me, at a moments notice and for him to not be able to fix this was devastating.  I just wanted to us to be happy for once, we both had rough previous marriages and we were eachother's happy place.  He was stressed to the max, he couldn't sleep and was constantly worrying about me and how I was holding up both mentally and physically.  I love the man more than words could ever describe so knowing that our dreams of growing old together and moving to an island in the Caribbean were not going to ever come to fruition, completely broke my heart.   We love to travel and that was thrown out of the window when I was diagnosed.  Would we ever be able to get to Mexico like we planned for June 2016? It didn't look likely as of then.  No one tells you how to handle this, they tell you there are counselors, but is there ever a right way to grieve this diagnosis with your loved ones? If there is, we haven't found it yet!

The Genetic mutation profiling came back, my phone rang downstairs after 9pm one night, Kaela and I were upstairs talking and laying in my bed.  Jon was downstairs on the phone with work, he missed the call on my phone, then got a call on his phone, same number, but he missed it as well as he couldn't get off his call in time.  Then again, my phone rang again, he answered it and it was Brenda, my Cancer Navigator. I couldn't understand why she was calling so late at night and it had me worried but she called with good news, I had EGFR (Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor) positive genetic mutation, which was a positive sign, it enabled me to take targeted therapy for my cancer instead of relying on normal chemotherapy and radiation. The mutation is a Catch 22 sort of thing, it is what brought on this Cancer, however it is also what can keep me alive longer and able to try all of the targeted therapy treatments that are working so well now.  The news brought tears to my eyes and for the first time in months, I felt some relief. I literally cried and hugged Kaela and Jon.  Although I still had Stage 4 Lung Cancer, I was able to get prescribed a pill called Tarceva, an oral chemotherapy pill.  This treatment has had great trials and many people have lived years upon years on this pill.  Brenda stated they are doing the paperwork and will get the drug to me as soon as possible.  It was a relief, but I was still in pain and because I am not a big pill person, I never asked for more pain meds, until I couldn't sleep at all.  Brenda explained I needed to take Hydrocodone like clockwork every 6 hours for the pain, so that is what I did and it helped immensely.  The next chapter of my life was going to begin that first day I took Tarceva and as much research as I did on the pill and it's side effects, I was still no where near prepared for what I was about to go through...