August 21, 2005

I have seven more radiation treatments to go – five days next week and Monday and Tuesday the following week.  Just in time for school to start!

My skin is definitely showing evidence of the radiation treatments.  It’s like having a sunburn that gets progressively worse.  Your skin certainly takes a beating, but thankfully, as we all know, sunburns do go away.  I have special gel stuff to use on the affected area and that seems to help.  No peeling like a regular sunburn though; just redness.  And I have to use special deodorant on the left side because regular deodorant contains aluminum, which doesn’t react well with radiation.

After the radiation is over I will start getting weekly Herceptin again.  While I don’t enjoy the thought of getting an IV every week again, I know through my research that it’s the only possibility for me.  I don’t want to make you read my past updates so I’ll recap a bit.  I have Her2 positive cells and cancer cells can be either hormone receptor positive or negative.  My cells are hormone receptor negative, and that means that the conventional drugs that many women take for 5 years to prevent recurrence after their treatments conclude (such as Tamoxifen) will do nothing for me.  Due to my tumor size and the fact that I had positive lymph nodes, there is a very high probability of recurrence, and Herceptin is the only thing that can prevent that from happening.  However I have also learned that many women who have Stage I or Stage II Her2+ breast cancer (mine is Stage III) also get weekly Herceptin for a year after their regular treatments.  So it’s a major inconvenience but well worth it.  And by the time I have been on the Herceptin for another 6 or 9 months, there will hopefully be a vaccine trial for which I will be qualified.

There is probably one thing I have done during radiation that not too many other people have done, but I can’t be sure.  I was hired the other day for an all-day photo shoot down in Milwaukee through Meridian Studios in Neenah for Getty Images in NY. I don’t do it often (too time-consuming), but once in awhile I pick up a modeling job through the agency that the kids work through—I really like Sara, the woman who runs it, and I like to help her when I can – but I certainly wasn’t thinking I would do it during my treatments.  I worked with another female model and with a guy who looks exactly likeRichard Gere – I had to play the part of his wife – which was interesting, strange, and funny in so many ways (see picture at left--I am not going to leave thuis one up too long because he's not my real husband!).   We shot at a farmer’s market, along the riverfront carrying shopping bags and riding bikes, at a sidewalk café, at a book store, and then we did some scenes in exercise clothes along the river.  The people who worked the shoot were so talented and I learned a lot from them.  I still laugh when I think about the fact that they liked my very short, post-chemo hairstyle – they were going for the “urban chic” look, and, like it or not, that’s what I now apparently have.  I told Sara that I can change my look for almost any client she has with all the wigs I now own :-)

I’m not sure that I will have anything interesting to say from this point forward, since I will soon be done with radiation, so I am not sure how often I will write updates.  The Herceptin treatments will be non-eventful.  I will probably have reconstruction surgery in February or March.  I will write updates to the website when there is something to report.

Happy back-to-school!

XXOO
Val