Heather’s Story

Site created on March 11, 2020

In February 2020 we learned that I have Breast cancer. We are using this site to keep family and friends updated in one place. We appreciate your support and words of hope and encouragement. Thank you for visiting.

Newest Update

Journal entry by Heather Skelton

Sorry I have not updated lately. So I will do that now.
My last AC chemo was June 15th. We stopped chemo after that until we delivered the baby. We chose to induce at 37 weeks. She made her entrance on July 15th at 9:45 am. She was 7 lb 0 oz and 19.25 inches long. She was bigger than were expecting but still a healthy size. And she was completely healthy. We named her Andarta Maddyn. We wanted her to have a name that meant strong or was related to something like that. Andarta is a Celtic warrior goddess and Maddyn means one whose mother was a brave warrior. We felt this name was fitting because she was fighting the cancer with me until she got here, she is as much a warrior as I am. This little girl is mommy's hero.
I got sometime off of chemo to heal and enjoy her.
The new chemo, Taxol started August 13th. I have 12 rounds total to complete. I have so far done 3. I go weekly now instead of every three weeks. So far the main side effects have been a little fatigue and muscle/joint pain. Otherwise it is not bad. I had my 3rd treatment yesterday and I did have some weird allergic reaction, we aren't sure what caused it as it was just itchy around my port line but no where else so we are thinking maybe it was the bandage they use to hold the needle in or the stuff they used to clean the area. They gave me some benadryl and all is fine. 
The next steps is to finish chemo, then have surgery-a mastectomy on the right side, and hopefully reconstruction. Then I will go on to radiation and then hormone therapy. So we still have a long road ahead of us but we are making our way.

On another note I requested a PET scan after the baby came. We couldn't do any imagining while I was pregnant but I wanted to know exactly what I was dealing with. We knew the cancer had spread into two lymph nodes (out of 28, not too bad). We wanted to know if it had spread anywhere else. The PET scan showed no cancer. We are excited and thrilled with this result but we are also cautious to not get super excited as we are waiting for the doctor to say "you beat cancer" or "you're cancer free" so until we hear that from the doctor we are staying pretty chill about the results (meaning we aren't celebrating as of yet).

I will probably update again but it might not be until later since I doubt much will change for now. 
Thank you to everyone who has helped us on this journey.
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