Keri's Breast Cancer Story: One More Chemo Treatment Added to the Schedule

My wife, Keri Haberstroh, was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 25 in 2005. My name is Doug, and I am here to tell Keri's breast cancer story, from start to finish. Keri's breast cancer treatment process had been longer than expected. At this point, she was almost done with her second round of chemotherapy. But since the first round of chemo was cut short due to Keri's bad reaction, the doctor decided to tack on one more treatment just to be safe.

Subject: Quick Update

Sent: Monday, October 31, 2005 12:31 PM

Hi All,

Just wanted to send a quick update on my treatments. I had a check-up with my oncologist this morning and he says everything looks good. However he suggested that we add one more treatment to my schedule. This means I will have one this Thursday and then one more after that.

His reasoning is that we cut things short before my surgery because of the bad reaction I was having to the drugs so in a way he wants to pretend like we didn't do any chemo prior to surgery. That's not to say it wasn't at all effective just wasn't fully effective.

Also he says that once I am finished with chemo I have no other treatment options, meaning that I cannot do any hormone therapy because my cancer was hormone receptive negative. Therefore I cannot have any preventative drugs that others get if they are hormone receptive positive. So he would feel better if we did an extra treatment for safety sake and then he would also consent to having my port removed during my last reconstruction surgery.

If it takes one extra treatment to be okay to have the port removed then no problem I'll do one more treatment. I've made it through this many why not one more.

Anyway just wanted to let you all know the new development and that now my last treatment will not be this Thursday.

We are traveling to Kansas for Thanksgiving so my last treatment will be in December after we get back in town. Once more another lesson I have learned...things do not always go the way I want them to so I need to just get over trying to have things always go my way. Although if chemo didn't teach me that living an airforce life would have eventually. :) I'll be emailing again soon. I hope everyone has a wonderful Halloween.

Trick or Treat

Keri