Update: Chemo

I was scheduled to have my second Adriamycin and Cytoxan treatment this morning. Blood draw at 9am, then an appointment with the oncologist at 10, followed by chemo. Unfortunately, when they drew my blood and tested it, my white blood cell count was down to 1.9. Normal range is between 4.0 and 11.0 and they will not give additional chemo treatments unless the white blood cell count is at least 3.0, so I had to reschedule for next Wednesday. At that point, they will test my blood again and if my levels are ok, we can go ahead with the chemo.
From here on out, I will be getting a Neulasta shot the day after each chemo treatment to lower my chances of getting an infection. The side effect of this shot is bone pain, headaches and swelling in the arms and legs. The doctor said bone pain is the major one. Bone pain?! Really? I'm thirty-five years old. I definitely wasn't expecting to be having bone pain at my age, and to be honest, I'm not happy about it! I'm thankful that they are watching me, and making sure my levels don't drop, but I'm not thankful that I have to take my temperature every day. I'm not thankful that my bones are going to hurt. I'm not thankful that this pushes my end chemo date into mid to late August, past my sister's wedding and the beginning of school. I'm not happy that my body has reacted so severely so quickly. And to be honest, I'm scared. A few weeks into this journey, I got a "hunch", a "feeling" that I wasn't going to see my fortieth birthday. I try to write it off as a trick of an anxious mind, but when things like this happen and my body can't handle the treatment to rid itself of the cancer that is trying to take over my body, to be honest, it seems like more of a possibility. Six months ago, I felt invincible. Sure, my mind was on the fritz, but I didn't even think of cancer, or heart problems, or stroke, or anything like that. Now, I feel vulnerable and exposed. Nothing is a guarantee. I defeated the odds every step of the way with this cancer, and not in a good way. The only two things that put me at higher risk than anyone else for breast cancer were that I am a woman and that I'm white. In every other category, I was a low risk. And yet here I am, at age 35, boobless, and undergoing two different chemo regiments because, against all odds, I have breast cancer that metastasized to the lymph nodes. According to the graph my doctor gave me, based on my current treatment plan, over the next ten years, "only"10 out of 100 patients with my type of cancer who have undergone my treatment will die from the cancer. "Only"10. And that number is that low because they go through chemo. With just the mastectomy, no chemo, it grows to 17 who die from the cancer out of every hundred patients. This is MY type of cancer, stage 2, small, treatable. My cancer may be small and very "treatable" but it is cancer and it kills and it could kill me. Not pretty, but that's the reality of it, and when my white blood cell count tanks right off the bat and I have to postpone the treatment that is supposed to save my life, it makes me realize that there are no guarantees. So today, I'm mad. I'm mad because I feel out of control. I can't even decide when my treatment days will be! My body rules everything right now and it really makes me mad!
I am not, by any means, feeling defeated. I'm not going to give up the fight because of a bump in the road. This war is by no means over and I do know Who ultimately is in control of it all. Today, however, I'm taking a short break from the fight to cry, and vent and walk an angry couple of miles, because there comes a point when it all becomes too much to handle and I need a release.