Day 28 - The Quilt

I received a quilt in the mail today.  It is a hand-made quilt crafted by members of the First Baptist Church of Aiken, SC where my Grandma and Grandpa Overman have been members for more years than I've been on this earth.  My Grandma requested that the church prayer group make the quilt for me, and I was moved to tears when I opened the package.  Each string tie in the quilt represents a prayer that was offered up on my behalf by someone in the church congregation.  They have provided me with a way to covered (in a very literal way) in prayers.

There is an off chance that I met one of the creators of this quilt when I was very very young, but it is highly unlikely which means that people who do not know me at all took the time to make me this most touching gift.  People who don't even know me did something so kind and generous for me. It will be difficult for me to properly express my gratitude for the prayers and the symbol representing those prayers.  I will try, but I don't know that the words will come out the right way, but hopefully they will be able to know how grateful I am.

As I've said, I can't begin to list everything for which I am grateful, but I will try on occasion.  I am grateful for people who are sending me baseball caps from various areas of the country to keep my noggin warm and to also represent their strength and prayers.  I am grateful for the calls, texts, Facebook messages, cards, smoke signals, owls (NERD), and emails that I get on a regular basis.  The support and love has simply been overwhelming.

Over the past week or so, I've been working on a to-do list for my doctor. Well, that kind of sounds bad.  I am not really going to boss him around (I will politely ask like a proper southern lady), but there are many things that I would like for him to research on my behalf.  Triple negative breast cancer is a hot topic in the cancer research community, and there are a lot of medications, treatments, and clinical trials that I would like to learn more about.  I listened to a webinar about TNBC (triple negative breast cancer) yesterday which really helped with some items for the to-do list.  One of the doctors on the webinar encouraged participation in clinical trials, and something that he said really resonated with me "past participation in clinical trials helps us offer the best possible treatment to current patients."  Those who have gone down this road before me have helped blaze the trail for my treatment plan, and I am so grateful to them.  If there is anything that I can do, at any point during my journey, to help someone in the future as well as improve my current treatment plan, I AM IN.

TNBC is a particularly tricky type of breast cancer (not that there are any nice kinds) because there are no hormone receptors in triple negative tumors (hence the triple negative designation), and many breast cancer medications are designed to target hormones (can we ever get away from blaming things on hormones).  I've you've ever heard of someone having to take a pill for 5+ years as part of treatment for breast cancer, she is talking about taking a pill to suppress hormones in the body to help prevent cancer recurrence.  There's no 5-year pill (yet) for TNBC, but there are some post-treatment treatments (say that 5 times fast) that are being heavily researched.  The Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville is likely to even open a TNBC vaccine trial at the end of this year/beginning of next.

All are on the to-do research list that I will politely hand off to my doctor when I see him for my chemo treatment next week. It's color-coded and on a piece of paper with the Nelson Mandela quote "It always seems impossible until it's done."  Fitting, no?

Most TNBC is highly responsive to chemotherapy, which is great news and certainly helps me through the barfy days. I swear that my lump feels smaller already.  We'll see what the tape measure says next week.