A Journey in Pink Part II, Eradication by Bonna L. Nelson
Our breast cancer (BC) journey was our new full-time job. It required everything that our former careers demanded of us: planning, organizing, researching, reading, consulting with specialists, traveling to meetings and consultations, preparing notes for meetings and post-meeting reports for support teams and advocating to keep the project on time and successful. This new journey was a bit more personal and invasive, of course, including such processes as physical exams, mammograms, sonograms, MRIs, CT scans, frequent blood tests and the next step, the much-feared chemotherapy, or what I call the “eradication.� With the new journey undertaken during the coronavirus pandemic, there was the addition of COVID-19 protection measures to be followed. Those measures still include waiting in the car until cleared to enter buildings for tests or to see doctors. Also, being asked the usual barrage of virus exposure-related questions, then wearing a mask, sanitizing ha nd s a nd hav ing temperat u re checked on entry and always the risk of exposure outside the safety of my home.
This phase of the Journey in Pink begins with a second consulting meeting with my wonderful University of Maryland (UM) medical oncologist, Dr. Mary DeShields, to discuss my eradication/chemotherapy plan. In our first discussion prior to surgery, Dr. DeShields had said that the number of chemotherapy treatments would range between four and sixteen, depending on the outcome of the lumpectomy and lymph node surgery.
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