Good news and more good news!

Hello! I'm back home after two very busy, yet successful days of appointments. Yesterday I had an appointment with Dr. Bankowski, a fertility doctor at Oregon Reproductive Medicine. He's an awesome doctor and I feel very fortunate that I was able to get in to see him. He was very informative and basically told us all about the process of freezing eggs. It's a fairly new thing, so there's not much data regarding success rates, but for someone in my situation, it's a good thing to do. Luckily for me, my period should be starting any day (sorry if that's too much info for all the guy readers!), so I will get the process started very soon. As soon as my period comes, I have to go back to Portland and get the process of IVF started. They're bi-passing a lot of the other tests and medications because of my situation. My process will take about 12 days total. I'll have to have Joe give me shots twice daily. I'll be taking Repronex and Follistim. It wont be a very fun 12 days, but totally worth it. On day 12 of this, the egg retrieval will take place. I'll be put to sleep for that and it will take about 1/2 hour. Some of my eggs will be left as they are, some will be fertilized so I'll have embryos to freeze. The success rates of frozen embryos is much higher, so Joe and I think it's a good idea to do that since we want to have kids after we get married. I'm so excited about this! Normally IVF treatment costs about $12,000 and insurance doesn't pay for any of it. I got an e-mail from the doctor today though and they're only going to charge me their cost. I am so thankful for that! We were going to do this regardless, but that's so nice of them! And for the $2,500 we have to pay, we found out about a program called Fertile Hope. Basically it's a program for people going through cancer and it helps pay for treatment if you're in jeopardy of becoming infertile. I meet every qualification, so we don't think I'll have a problem getting assistance. I feel so fortunate/lucky/excited about all of this!! I left that appointment feeling so good and relieved!

As soon as we got home from Portland we packed up and left for Seattle. My appointment was at 8:30 this morning, so we thought it would be best to go up last night. I met with Dr. Petersdorf at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance. I have diffuse large cell lymphoma which he said is one of the most common and is very treatable with a 90% plus cure rate. He said that there's about a 15% chance that it would cause infertility, but thought that getting all of the freezing done is a great idea. Better to be safe than sorry! My cancer is intermediate grade which is the best. As far as staging goes, from looking at the scans I've had so far, it appears to be Stage 1. Again, this is the best. YAY! Although it's stage 1, he said he'll treat it as if it's stage 4 so my treatment (chemo/radiation) will be very aggressive. That's ok, whatever kills it, right?!

He said the treatment is "bread and butter" so I can have it wherever I want. Problem is, the soonest I can get in with the oncologist in Longview isn't until the end of March. I don't want to wait that long! It's totally my decision as to where I want to be treated, so I think I'm leaning towards Seattle. I really like it up there and since my chemo will only be once every three weeks, it wont be that bad to drive up there.

Hmmm, I think that's about it. I'm sooo exhausted, but so excited that we've had two days of very exciting/encouraging news. I'll be able to have kids and I'm going to live to be an old cranky lady!!

Alright, time to go watch WSU beat Oregon with Joe and Subie. GO COUGS!

Thanks for all of the continued prayers!

Love, Katie



Below are pictures taken during my biopsy. It's probably totally against the rules to post them...I had to take a picture of the picture to be able to do it. The top one has a good picture of the tumor as they were taking a sample. The second is the crazy looking tool they used. Pretty amazing!