I completed the embryo transfer on December 3rd as planned. Everything went well and as expected. Walking in to the surgical center brought back all the feelings. We ended up in the same pre-op room that we were in for my egg retrieval almost 2 years ago exactly. It made me realize how far we have come in the last 2 years and reflect on everything we had to go through to get to this point.

The actual embryo transfer was wild. It’s about a 10 minute procedure that you get to watch on a computer screen through ultrasound. You lay on your back and place your feet in the stirrups (just like at the OBGYN). They go into the uterine space with a catheter. The computer switches to the embryologist sucking your embryo up into another catheter. Then they combine the 2 catheters and place the embryo. The ultrasound tech is pushing into your abdomen the entire time trying to get the best view. Oh by the way, you have to have a full bladder for this procedure so you have to pee the entire time they are pushing on your bladder with the ultrasound. That’s it! You wait 20 seconds, they pull all the catheters out and then you get to go pee right away, get dressed and go home! After the embryo transfer you are on restrictions for 48 hours, no strenuous exercise or sex for 2 days. Continue all medication including estradiol 3x per day, 8 hours apart, intervaginal progesterone 2x per day, 12 hours apart and inter-muscular progesterone 1x per day at 7:00 pm.

So now what? Now, we wait… 9 days. The longest 9 days of my life it seems. On the 9th day after the embryo transfer I go in for a blood draw that tells me if I am pregnant or not. That determines the next steps. And…. Now we wait.

If you have been following along you know that I was due for a follow up ultrasound to make sure the hormones for IVF were still doing what they were supposed to… and they still are! This ultrasound was to assess the stage of my ovaries to make sure they were still “quiet” and not spontaneously ovulating. This appointment also included blood work to assess where my hormone levels are. Everything came back exactly where it’s supposed to be, so what’s next?

1. Stop taking Lupron injections and switch to progesterone injections which are intramuscular- watch a 4 minute video on how to inject and begin in 2 days
2. Continue taking estradiol (2mg) 3x per day, 8 hours apart
3. Begin progesterone vaginal insert 2x per day, 12 hours apart. You may have leakage so you will want to wear a pad. You will need to continue progesterone supplementation through 12 weeks of pregnancy. Oh boy…
4. Transfer the embryo on December 3rd (1 week from ultrasound appointment)

All I can think about is the fact that I have to put progesterone intravaginally for 3 months…let’s just hope this is all worth it.

After about 4 weeks of Lupron injections I went back in for a follow up ultrasound for another “suppression check” (making sure the ovaries are quiet and I am not ovulating). Let’s make sure the Lupron worked this time around… and it did!

Now to begin the “stimulation phase”:

1. Start taking estradiol (2mg) 3x per day, 8 hours apart.
2. Continue Lupron injections every night between 7-9 p.m. but reduce from 10 to 5 units per day
3. Come back in 2 weeks for another ultrasound and blood work

…And to remember to take all of these medications every day at the correct times. I had to set reminders on my phone and keep medications in my car, next to my bed and in my work bag to make sure I had them at 5:00 a.m., 1:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m.

Well, I guess I can’t go to bed at 7:30 anymore! Let’s hope my body continues to work along with the medications and hormones and not against them.

Like I have said before, it’s impossible to know what worked and what didn’t. After my cancer diagnosis I changed my diet, began chemotherapy treatment and continued my exercise routine religiously. Was it the diet? Was it the exercise? Or was it just the chemotherapy that kicked my cancers ass in 4 months? We will never know… but what I do know is throughout my cancer diagnosis, treatment, and recovery… exercise was my saving grace. Not only is exercise a good stress relief, but it allowed me to set aside time for myself every day. There is research that states movement- whether it’s lifting weights, cardio, CrossFit, yoga, or just going for a walk can help your metabolism, cell regeneration, and can improve mental health.

I used exercise as part of my treatment and recover from cancer and I am now using it as prevention. Prevention for cancer and any other chronic illnesses.

Not only did exercise help with my mental health and ease anxiety, stress and depression… it also helped move the chemotherapy in and out of my body. Increasing the movement of my body and muscles, pushing the drugs back out of my body. The more sedentary you are during cancer treatment the more the medications and chemotherapy sit in your cells. I believe exercise along with a very strict diet helped me beat cancer in record time. I will always preach that movement is medicine because I experienced it and continue to experience it every day.

Diagnosed with cancer or another chronic/terminal illness? Struggling with mental health? Struggling with physical health? EXERCISE. MOVE. It will solve more of your problems than you know. It’s the cheapest option, so why not give it a try?

In honor of breast cancer awareness month I would like to recap my story over the past couple of years for those who have been recently diagnosed with cancer, currently undergoing treatment or are in the final stages of recovery. This is my story:

In October (ironically enough being breast cancer awareness month), I found a lump in my right breast. How did I find it? Well I was sore from working out and I was pushing on my pec muscle and lo and behold there was a large lump in the top part of my breast, sitting right on my pec muscle. Huh, that’s odd but I didn’t really think anything of it because I have lumpy breasts and dense breast tissue anyways. I scheduled my annual pap exam and figured they always do a breast exam as well so I will just wait for that. I then had my husband feel the lump and his reaction said it all, “holy shit, you need to go get that checked out! You should go to the ER.” I laughed, thinking this was a major overreaction. In hindsight, it was not. I then decided to schedule a breast exam as soon as they could get me in. Again, my OBGYN thought it was nothing, “I think it’s an adenoma or a fatty cyst, I have had a couple removed myself, but we will get an ultrasound just in case.”

Fast forward a few weeks, ultrasound, biopsy and cancer diagnosis later… I began the whirlwind of being a cancer patient and undergoing treatment. Looking back on the timeline, it was quite impressive:

November 4th 2022: Diagnosed with high grade, invasive ductal carcinoma

Egg retrieval: December 8th

Chemotherapy start: December 15th

Post chemotherapy MRI: March 3rd

Post Chemotherapy MRI results: March 7th

(Got to skip my 2nd round of chemotherapy)

Double mastectomy: April 4th

CANCER FREE PHONE CALL: April 7th

2nd reconstructive surgery: August 28th

1 year after being diagnosed with cancer: November 4th 2023

The most wild ride. The most uncontrolled I have ever felt over my own life. The scariest, yet most rewarding year that will change my life forever.

So after alllll of that… What am I up to now?

After cancer treatment and 2 surgeries, sticking with a strict diet and exercise for over a year. I decided to stick with it! Because why not? I spent so much time and effort detoxing sugar and other chemicals out of my life and the cravings stopped. So why add them back in right? The only thing that I will “cheat” on every once in a while is beer. At the end of a long, hard week that is where I will ease up and give myself a break. So yes, after about 8 months of no booze, I cracked open my first beer last summer and it was GOOD, however sometimes I wish I never even did that. I had such a hard time going into chemotherapy infusions knowing I was putting poison in my body and here I am drinking poison by choice just to feel good for a few hours? Being human=imperfections.

Till this day, I still try and limit alcohol intake to the weekends and still cut out sugar in my diet, mostly sticking with a keto diet and exercising regularly.

I have switched my mindset from survival mode to cancer prevention and what I can do to prevent this horrible disease from coming back. And if it does, I know I did everything I could on my end.

However, now that I am starting the IVF process I am back to no alcohol and weaning off of caffeine, which they recommend while on the medications and getting my body prepared to hopefully be pregnant. So I am taking medication that makes me tired.. and then cutting back on caffeine = the worst. Having a bad day or week and not being able to have a beer at the end = even worse. Again, it is all a mindset and yes, I have good days and bad days but every day I make that choice again and again.

I have realized IVF is an entirely new ball game. After being on the Lupron shot for the past few weeks I am starting to wonder how much of the side effects were actually from chemotherapy vs the Lupron shot (I was on Lupron when I was going through chemotherapy to protect my ovaries from chemo). Side effects I’m currently experiencing:

1. Hot flashes
2. Mood swings
3. Body aches
4. Increased appetite
5. Weight gain
6. Dry skin
7. Break outs
8. Fatigue

Again, you are probably thinking “your poor husband.”

As my IVF journey continues, I went in for a “suppression check” this week and they informed me that my body is still trying to ovulate on its own despite the suppressive hormone medication I have been injecting every night for the past 2 weeks. So what does this mean? This means that I have to delay my embryo transfer date a month to RESTART EVERYTHING. Great. Now what to do:

1. Retrieve a trigger shot of Ovidrel by a speciality pharmacy. You need to take this shot tonight or tomorrow, but it also needs to be approved by insurance and delivered to your home. Ok, impossible. (I did get it approved and delivered 1 day late)
2. Take trigger shot of Ovidrel
3. Begin 10 units of Lupron every night between 7-9pm
4. You may have your period, you may not
5. Continue Lupron for 6 more weeks
6. Continue all the terrible side effects

Now, we just hope this is all going to be worth it right? New transfer date scheduled for December 3rd!

What did we decide?

We decided to go forward with the transfer of the one healthy, BRCA free embryo we have. So, what does this entail?

Since completing chemotherapy and getting off of Lupron my hormones have been out of wack to say the least. It took about 3-4 months to get my cycle back and even with that it has been very irregular for the past 1.5 years. After all of this, am I even able to carry a child? Was this all an entirely large waste of money and time? I guess we will find out, but the first step is actually getting back on birth control to regulate hormones. So I have started an oral birth control for 30 days. Then I actually get back on Lupron for 30 days, overlapping birth control for 5 days exactly. I have to inject the Lupron every night between 5-7 p.m. subcutaneously (low abdomen). “You can review the videos for all injections at http://www.freedommedteach.com” = watch a 5 minute tutorial on how to complete safely. Okay, great. After 30 days of Lupron, I then begin progesterone injections in the butt cheek and …inserted vaginally (please store at room temperature). WHAT. Do they have a tutorial for that too? My lord, what am I getting myself into.

This entire process is to build and maintain uterine lining and to maximize your chance at getting pregnant and maintaining a healthy pregnancy. So let’s just hope it’s worth it.

Let’s take a step back. If you have been following along, you may remember the egg retrieval I had back in December of 2022 prior to starting chemotherapy. I had 10 successful eggs retrieved. This seemed like a lot to me and I was pumped- maybe eventually we can have multiple kids and all of this will be behind us. Then I got the results that I was BRCA1 positive and I had over a 50% chance of passing this along to my children if we tried for kids naturally. So, we opted into turning our eggs into embryos and testing them for the BRCA1 genetic mutation to prevent passing this along to our children. So after cancer treatment and recovery we have decided to move forward with this process.

Out of the 10 eggs I had retrieved, 7 of them were successfully turned into embryos (1 did not survive the thaw and 2 did not fertilize). Next step was to test the embryos for chromosomes matching or better known for testing for birth defects (PGT-A testing). Out of the 7 embryos, 4 of them were “healthy” embryos called euploid. Now, it was time for the BRCA1 genetic testing (PGT-M). Out of the 4 healthy embryos, ONE came back “low risk” for the genetic mutation. ONE. Out of 10 eggs, you are telling me we only have 1 chance to have a healthy, supposedly “cancer free” baby? Wow. This was supposed to be the fun part.

So now we have to decide… do we do another egg retrieval and start this process all over again? Shoot for the 1 embryo we have and hope it works out? Who knows if I can even do another egg retrieval due to chemotherapy damage. So here we are. Big decisions are about to be made.

Oh P.S. the one embryo we have… is a GIRL!

One thing that was challenging for me especially as a young female going through cancer treatment was looking like a “cancer patient”. The hair loss and looking “puffy” or swollen from the steroids was not a good look. It happens slowly, over time so it’s weird to see yourself slowly change over weeks…months. Then all of a sudden I was bald with no eye brows or eyelashes, puffy and dry skin. Looking like a walking corpse. At the time, I don’t remember ever looking THAT sick or feeling THAT sick but looking back on pictures I have a hard time believing I ever looked that bad.

When you are in survival mode it is easy to not think about your appearance. I mean, who cares!? You are fighting for your life. BUT trying to go to work and covering up the hair loss with hats, scrub caps, and pinning up hair around the bald spots got a little tiring.

On top of the hair loss, weight gain and edema left me look “puffy” from the steroids I was receiving every week prior to chemotherapy. As I tried to continue working out and eating healthy it was hard to see my body get swollen and puffy despite the effort I was putting in.

Being over a year out from all of this, it continues to be difficult. Dealing with the awkward stages as my hair grows back and getting my body back from the puffiness did take time. I have never been a self conscious person, but looking like a cancer patient was challenging. It keeps you from pretending that this is actually happening or happened. Many people would ask, “did you get a haircut?” Or commented, “I like your hat” even though you know they are just saying that because it was inappropriate to be wearing a hat at work… just constant reminders that yes I have cancer and yes this fucking sucks.