Drumroll please: ROUND 6!!

But first, the catch up.

At first round 5 was going really well. I was fatigued but I never got the seriously awful stomach issues that I'd had in previous rounds. I had trouble drinking, but I did *much* better eating, and I really thought I was doing well. I made it all the way to 7 days out from chemo and then made the mistake of declaring that I was over the hump. ROOKIE MOVE. That night I developed a cough, and the next day I started running a fever. By 5 pm I was in the ER at El Camino checking myself in for IV antibiotics to deal with the fact that I'd developed atypical pneumonia. They admitted me and I stayed from Wednesday night to Friday afternoon. Oddly enough it was actually a really nice couple of days. I hadn't been feeling well and they were on top of it, they were good about letting me sleep at night, and a couple of days of staying in bed, watching movies, and having food show up at regular intervals seemed to be just what I needed. I suppose I shouldn't recommend a hospital stay as a vacation, but you know, if the shoe fits... :)

Once I got home I was still very tired and taking a deep breath was not easy. I discovered that posture was very important and it definitely helps to know when you're slouching if you can't breathe when you do. So hey, good for my ability to sit up straight! I spent the weekend resting and then slowly worked on cleaning up the house a bit before Thanksgiving. We did a very small dinner this year, just us and Jen and shofixti and it was perfect. Charles made me filet instead of turkey, too. He loves me. <3

My bout with pneumonia has made me more wary of going out in public though, so I think I left the house something like 3 times between when I got out of the hospital and yesterday. One of those was to brave the mall and get the kids picture taken with Santa, and really, that was good enough for at least a few days. I usually take them in the middle of the week, going on a weekend was rough. They did great though.

Yesterday was my pre-chemo check in with my oncologist, and as usual she had new information for me that I *really* think I should have had before. Like, the fact that radiation (barely mentioned as we've gone along) is every single day for 5.5 WEEKS. How did that not come up before? I can't go anywhere for a month and a half because I need to be able to be at the hospital every single day, that's something that should have been mentioned! And she still won't actually schedule the radiation, because she is going to try to convince me to do the second set of chemo. I keep telling her that I'm really not willing to sign on for that without compelling medical evidence that is better than "I want to." That's her whole argument so far, she'd really like me to do it. That's nice. I'd really like me not to do it. Also, and for the first time ever, she told me that beyond the 5.5 weeks of radiation, and the 8 months of targeted hormone IV therapy once every 3 weeks, I also need to take a targeted therapy pill once a day for TEN YEARS. Um, what? And when I looked at her like she was a crazy person for thinking I knew that already, she told me I must have forgotten. And then spent the rest of the appointment not telling me anything else about my future treatment, because I'd "just forget." I honestly started to feel like she was gaslighting me, it was bizarre.

So I left her office in a pretty bad mood, and then called to schedule a consultation with my surgeon. I'll go see him on the 8th, talk about my surgical options, and then I have the pre-surgery MRI on the 20th. Hopefully everything comes back with the information that we want and I can go ahead with a very simple lumpectomy somewhere around the 26th. I'm hoping to avoid having to take any lymph nodes; I hear that when you do that surgery it requires drains which sounds super gross. (Obviously I'll do it if they say that it's necessary, but I'd sure rather not.) The rest of my day yesterday was kinda crappy, I had trouble getting my mood back up again. I managed by around 10 pm, with help, and I got most of a decent night of sleep. For some reason (maybe I took the pre-chemo steroid too late?) I woke up at 4 am *totally* awake. Tried to get back to sleep for about an hour and then gave up. Instead I enjoyed the quiet morning, worked on C4's Christmas stocking, and just took it easy. Drove him to school, headed for the hospital, and here I am. ROUND SIX. LAST ONE! It doesn't feel like as much of a victory as I'd hoped it would, knowing how much more hoops there are to jump through before I get to say I'm finished, but it's still an important hoop. And definitely one I'd really rather I never had to do again.