Yesterday (Thursday), I had my 7th infusion of Palitaxel (Taxol). When I wrote about my chemo plan in my temper tantrum post, I was off by one dose – so I shall end taxol at 9 doses. So Thursday was my Star Trek Voyager treatment (7 of 9) …

I now have my last two Taxol treatments scheduled (Thursdays). Next week I’ll be going out to the Redwood City infusion center because they couldn’t get me in at the regular place. It will be neat to see what the newer facility is like. I opted to have my last session (Oct 30) at the normal infusion center because I need to hear the chemo song and say farewell to all the wonder chemo nurses there. After 13 treatments (4 AC, 9 Taxol), I will have spent a lot of time at the ITA (infusion treatment area).

I have confirmation on my two surgery dates (surgeries describe in this post). The first surgery will be on November 19. One nice thing about this schedule is that we were able to rebook our Hawaii trip from December 3-11 to November 10-17. When we first talked about ending chemo early and doing surgery sooner, one of the things I was bummed out about was missing the Hawaii trip. I’m happy that we managed to work it all out, and our friends Nicky and Judy from the east coast will be joining us. I’m so looking forward to that trip.

I have also received clearance for traveling the week after surgery. So the originally scheduled trip to Niagara to visit my parents is back on for American Thanksgiving (Nov 26-30). I’ll have a checkup with the surgeon on Monday November 24 to ensure that I’m OK to fly – the expectation from the surgeon’s office is that it won’t be a problem and they suggested that I need not change flight plans at this time.

The second surgery (the long 8-10 hour surgery) will take place on December 17.

I have a lot of appointments scheduled – various ones to talk about the details of the surgeries and the details of the pathologies. I’ll end off the year, December 29th with appointments with surgery (to hopefully remove drains) and oncology to go over full pathology reports and make plans for next steps (likely anti-hormone therapy for 10-years) – it is at this point where I hope to get the message that I’m free of breast cancer (NED – no evidence of disease). That would be a very nice way to enter the new year.