Statistically Speaking…

I know. I left you hanging for the last several weeks and been breaking promises too. Even though I kept telling you a post is coming, I was really just living up to the promise I made last blog.

Plans. Fun. Living.

But I know it’s overdue. So many questions and concerns flood me every day that I know I owe you an hour of my time.  So here goes…..

What’s up, Ashley?

Well…. I have been throwing parties. Getting tattoos. Celebrating milestones. Packing up the entirety of a home and relocating it to Tennessee.  Purchasing a house and making it our own.  Oh, yeah and living with terminal cancer.

Almost forgot this was supposed to be a medical update… (and I’m getting to it).  But you see now? I have cancer but it most certainly doesn’t have me.   That is not to say it doesn’t effect my life.  It definitely controls about every moment of my day and how I do it.  But I still get up in the morning and do it anyway.

So, ready for a shot of the hard stuff?  Literally the day after the big move, I was able to establish my treatment and care at Vanderbilt.  The first meeting?  A horse pill of an appointment to swallow solo.  Stubborn me decided it would be fine to go alone.  I left the office in tears.  Have I mentioned that I didn’t want to know prognosis and dates and such?  That would be too much like a clock ticking over my head.  She gave them to me anyway…

There is a very good reason that I haven’t given you guys the name of my cancer.  It is bad.  Very bad.  But I call bullshit on anyone trying to tell me how long I get to fight.  There are simply too many variables in this science experiment to predict my conclusion.  Damn it, I’m a rare unicorn of being super extra.   The doctor basically confirmed it.  NO ONE gets this type of reoccurrence.  Like… a tiny margin.  Just like only a small percentage of breast cancers are BRCA positive.  So guess what?  I’m really flippin special here.  Like…. they should being paying me for the insight, “special”.  I sincerely doubt that I fall into anyone’s straight and narrow.

Another thing giving me (and you) hope….

I had my first chemo one week ago.  That was definitely three hard days of awful but I only need to do it every three weeks.  Dude, I so got that.  But, thankfully we won’t really have to much longer.  We are awaiting FDA approval for a medication that should be available sometime as soon as June or July.  It would be a daily pill with significantly better quality of life.  (Sidenote :  I hate that phrase. It feels like yours supposed to pick length or quality and that’s just not the situation here, at least we hope).

So… That’s about all I have for you guys at the moment.  Just know that I’m still here…. Being that annoying special snowflake in the complete wrong way and trying to make my own statistics.