PET scan tomorrow

This morning after carpool drop off I met up with a new “mom friend” and we biked to Indiana.  It was a beautiful morning filled with some of my favorite things – exercise, making new friends and sunshine.    Tomorrow morning after carpool drop off I have a PET scan.  This is the difficult reality I live in.   Trying to embrace each day and live the life I love, while also living with stage 4 breast cancer.

On the outside I look totally healthy.  I am running around like crazy planning for Hope Scarves’ sold out annual event, Colors of Courage next Friday.  I smile and laugh and joke around.  I think it confuses people who know I am “sick” but yet see me haul 3 garbage cans of yard waste and 2 recycling tubs to the curb in my running clothes.  Frankly, it confuses me too.

One thing is certain, tomorrow I will have a PET scan that will show us what the cancer is doing inside me.  Our hope is it will be a stable scan.   No progression.  And, we will continue my current treatment plan.  If it shows progression we will still go to Will’s soccer tournament this weekend, cheer on Bennett at his soccer game and laugh and joke around.  Because, as I keep telling myself, this is just information.  I don’t have to feel any worse physically than I do right now just because I get bad news.  Bad news doesn’t mean I am dying any quicker.  It means we have to try a different combination of drugs.   It means I hug my 3 boys even tighter.

I am happy.  I am trying to adjust to living with metastatic disease and what that means.  Weekly I read about others facing metastatic disease who have significant progression or like a friend of one of my Michigan summer friends, who left this earth far too soon because of this disease this week.  It is an awful, unfair reality to have stage 4 metastatic disease.  But, I hold. on. to. hope.   And I will hold on even tighter tomorrow morning.

I will write an update when we know results of the scan.

with hope,
Lara