Working to Breathe

Kate has been working on breathing. Both in the literal sense as she retrains her system to work around the missing sections of rib and muscle to breathe in and out, and in the yogic sense of using breath to center and ground one's spirit.

Her oncologist has been doing a hard sell on starting the hormone treatments, like, NOW! Since this is metastatic cancer, she was telling Kate that there are most probably micro-tumors hidden throughout her system and the best way to keep them at the micro level is to start hormone therapy as soon as possible.

Kate was slated to start this week, but then took a deep breath and a step back. No question the doc is right about those little buggers hiding out. And yes - the 'run smack into a brick wall' method of entering menopause is her best bet at surviving, and she will start taking the drugs. But.

The histology report showed her cancer to be both likely to spread (we'd figured that much out...) and slow growing (which means !!no chemo!! Yay!!). Will waiting a few weeks to begin treatment really make a difference in her long term survival? After mulling it over this weekend, she decided the answer is 'probably not'.

But, starting the treatment now, when she is still recovering from surgery and slated to start radiation shortly, could and probably would complicate her recovery. It's hard enough to heal when you've been hit from two different angles. Add in a third simultaneous blow? Ouch. 

So the current plan is to start the hormone treatments near or just after the end of radiation. In the meantime, her chest will have had a chance to heal from the surgery so it should no longer cause pain to take each breath. 

Life is easier when breathing doesn't hurt. No question there.

One step at a time.