My Story

By Paula Ryan

I was sitting at my desk at work, when my husband called to tell me the chilling news. My biopsy showed cancerous tumor in the right breast. This was in September of 1995. My life was never the same as I had now joined a large group of women who were victim to breast cancer. Much has happened to me since then which I will tell you about. Along the way one thing I found one thing I didn't want to be was a “victim”.

Surgery was done, a lumpectomy, which was followed by three months of caf and then radiation. Tamoxifen was added. With wig on I headed back to work and did quite well until a year later when a very scary condition, inflammatory b.c. occurred in the same breast. I began Taxotere and the horrible blisters went away. At that time, by best hope was stem cell treatment. So after a mastectomy I headed up to the City of Hope for 30 days. Heavy doses of Taxol were given. It was quite an experience; my main goal became not becoming hospitalized and getting home as soon as possible. I would daydream about arriving home and kissing the floor in appreciation. After an appropriate time span I did reconstruction which was also quite an ordeal. It was well worth the effort though, to move my stomach fat to a more advantageous area!

Many people say to fight breast cancer, you need to change your life style, so I stayed home, ate fairly well and did my daily walks. One morning, while walking with my husband I noticed it was harder to walk up the hill without getting out of breath. My husband didn't like the way I looked and insisted on taking me to emergency. Assuming I had a heart problem I was very upset when they called my oncologist. I wanted the heart problem! My liver enzymes were awful and I had a CA of 1500. I began on 13 rounds of Taxotere, 3 weeks apart. I was tested for Herceptin and luckily was told I was a match. My liver enzymes went to normal and my CA to 25. What a relief. Now I am coming up on my two year anniversary of taking Herceptin. A little fly got into the ointment though, last July I had sinus and nausea trouble. My Dr. did a MRI, next thing I knew I was in for brain surgery. Two small tumors had been found in my brain stem. They were successfully removed and I began brain radiation. During this time I never missed a weekly Herceptin treatment. One of my favorite pieces of paper is my recent MRI with a normal reading! It may be possible, as Chris suspects that if you keep up the her2 when the brain may have seepage, that some of that good old medicine crosses the barrier and gets up to the brain to kill some of those nasty cancer cells.

A lot has happened since this all began. I now live with a great appreciation for just waking up in the morning. I know I owe so much to my family who give me the reason to stay healthy. Much gratitude is also owed to my medical people at Kaiser who have kept me going. A special thanks to all the drug researchers and companies (especially Genentech) who work to rid of us this horrible disease. When I began this adventure I had two children still in high school. They have now graduated from UCSB and UCSD and I am so grateful to be here with them and my wonderful, supportive husband. I'm available for any information any of you may like! My best to you all!