Victoria's Fight

Just a quick update to let everyone know that Victoria is out of surgery. She seems to be doing much better than the last surgery. Her pain is under control, she has good energy, is eating well, and is in good spirit.

Hi All, Victoria had her final chemo treatment last week. This was a very good day for the both of us. Prior to recieving her final chemo she had a bone scan and a CT scan. The doctor reviewed the results with us prior to going into chemo and confirmed that she is in complete remission and there was nothing suspect on either of the scans. He said Victoria could have her port removed and that he would see her in 6 months. This was quite the emotional experience as just over a year ago Victoria had been diagnosed. The doctor gave Victoria a big hug and told her it's time to put this behind you and live your life. Currently, I am sitting in the hospital waiting for Victoria to come out of surgery. She is having the tissue expanders taken out and having the permanent implants put in. I'm expecting an update any minute, and will post again later today after she has come out of recovery. Although, I do not like these surgeries and I do not like to see Victoria go t...

Happy New Year! As you all know 2012 was an especially challenging year for Victoria and a year that we are happy to put behind us. If you saw or talked to Victoria today you wouldn’t even sense what she has been through. Her strength and positive attitude through every challenge along the way has been absolutely amazing! I’m proud to be the husband of somebody with such resiliency. The last time that I blogged Victoria was roughly two thirds the ways through her radiation treatment and we were preparing for the Race for the Cure. We had a wonderful turnout for the race for the cure and the team rose well over $2,000.00, which was donated to Susan G. Komen. The tail end of Victoria’s radiation was extremely brutal. Her skin was significantly burned, and turned a dark purple. She was in an incredible amount of pain due to the burns and there was little that could be done to help ease the pain. Victoria did see a wound doctor who was eventually able to manage the pain s...

Hello All, Our wonderful friends have put together a team, in honor of Victoria, to participate in the 20th annual Phoenix Susan G. Komen Race For The Cure. The race will take part on 14 October 2012 here in Phoenix. Victoria has been an incredible inspiration to me and I'm sure to many others. She has faced this battle courageously and has never lost sight of the goal to win this war! Fortunately, Victoria has had access to excellent healthcare and an unwavering support system composed of a loving family and incredible friends. Unfortunately, breast cancer is not selective of it's victims and there are countless people that have and will continue to benefit from Susan G. Komen. So, how can you show your support for Victoria and Susan G. Komen? Visit the team page for Victoria at: http://phoenix.info-komen.org/site/TR/RacefortheCure/PHX_PhoenixAffiliate?team_id=233258&pg=team&fr_id=2646 -Sign up to join our team -If you can't join our team, but want to sho...

It's been a busy summer for Victoria, Brodie and I. We finally moved back into our house and have had to travel out of state for a couple of weddings. Normalcy is beginning to finally settle in, well somewhat. Victoria is doing extremely well! Her attitude couldn't be better and she seems to be feeling great. Her hair is coming back, thick, beautiful and brown, yes brown! The medical and surgical oncologist both recommended that Victoria see a radiation oncologist to determine whether or not she need to receive radiation treatment. Prior to meeting with the radiation oncologist both Victoria and I agreed that the doctor would have to present a pretty strong case regarding Victoria's condition in order for her to go through radiation. We left the appointment not knowing what direction to take as the doctor had essentially described Victoria as being in a "grey" area and did not clearly provide any significant reason for Victoria going through radiation. Ho...

Victoria and I met with the surgical oncologist today and we couldn't have received better news. The pathology report came back from the lymph nodes and all of the breast tissue that was removed during Victoria's surgery and no cancer could be detected. The doctor told us that Victoria had a full pathological response and is in remission. This happens in about 15-20% of patients with Victoria's type of breast cancer. The chemotherapy did it's job and killed all of the cancer cells! As you can imagine this was very exciting news for us. Victoria and I are definitely ecstatic about the news and are looking forward to the road of recovery ahead of us. She will still finish out another 7 months of herceptin infusions, and will be on tamoxifen pills for the next 5 years. The herceptin is to prevent the type of breast cancer that she had from returning in what little amount of breast tissue she has remaining and the tamoxifen is to prevent cancer from showing up somew...

Terrible! That pretty much sums it up. We knew the day would come and we knew that it would be tough, and no matter how much Victoria or I mentally prepared ourselves we knew that it was going to be an emotional day. Driving to the hospital in the morning Victoria expressed to me how much she loved me and how much she loved our son, she was very scared about the surgery and as positive and strong as Victoria is she was worried that she might not make it through. It wasn't Victoria's first time having a major surgery, but this one especially worried her. I tried to be strong, encourage her, and tell her that she wasn't allowed to think those thoughts. But then I decided to let her be as emotional as she wanted, she needed to get it out and I believe it calmed her down a little. We arrived at the hospital for Victoria's pre-op appointment and she seemed okay. I didn't ask her how she was. Instead I just told her that it would be okay and she had a lot of peop...