Caroline's Breast Cancer Blog

     Last week I was a guest speaker at the University of Michigan...an experience that would have never happened if I wasn't a cancer survivor, who blogs, and who keeps in contact with old friends through Facebook.       This is my first grade class picture:        I am third from the left, center row.  Laura Olsen is fourth from the left, back row.  We were 6-years-old here , and together we gr aduat ed from Cent ral High School in Om aha , NE in the late 70's.  We both went onto college and graduate school and reconnected with each other, several years ago , via Faceboo k.      Laura is now... Laura J. Olsen, Ph.D., Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.  Together with Alexandra Stern, Ph.D., (Professor of American Culture at U of M), Laura teaches a class cal...

     As planned , I had a CyberKnife treatment about ten days ago.  The build up before the treatment turned out to be more intense than the treatment itself.  In the time it was decided that I had a brain tumor until I actually had CyberKnife, I had a fourth brain MRI, a CT scan of my head, met with two radiation oncologists, and a neurosurgeon.  There's a lot of medical personnel coordination and an incredible amount of technology that goes into a treatment, but for me as the patient, I was pleasantly surprised with how easy this all turned out to be.        A couple days before my treatment, I was scheduled for a 5-hour appointment which included meeting with a nurse and then a radiation oncologist, followed by the additional imaging studies...CT and brain MRI, and finally, a mask fitting, needed to keep my head still during the CyberKnife treatment.        Meeting with the nurse was really hel...

...it' s a tumor.       The thought of cancer spreading to my brain has been my worst fear...the kind of fear that brings tears to my eyes whenever I think or talk about the possibility.  Before my cancer diagnosis, I took my brain for granted.  Since my diagnosis, I was grateful everyday that my brain was cancer-free.        So now the thing that I feared the most has happened and surprisingly, I'm not freaking out.  I had two MRI studies and an MR spectroscopy .  I nitially, the lesion did not loo k like a classic metastatic tumor.  I sent my images for second and third opinions and now my case has been reviewed by several oncologists, several neuroradiologists , a radiation oncologist and a neurosurgeon at five institutions, in two states.  After some back-and-forth, my oncologist and the experts are all on board with call ing my lesion a metastat ic tumor.      In me eting with t...

     The story I'm writing about today happened a month ago.  For some reason, I have been hesitant to blog about what transpired on February 4th when my husband and I got in our car with the intention of attending a meeting with our U.S. House of Representative, Congressman Peter Roskam, of the Illinois 6th district.  Mr. Roskam was in our town to speak about the Affordable Care Act and we wanted to hear what he had to say and try to let him know why we feel that repealing it without a sound replacement plan could really hurt us, and many people we care about.         This is my husband, Wynn.  He is the father of our two children and a pediatrician.  He has been in private practice for over 30 years and through the 90's and early 2000's, he also volunteered at a clinic that offered free and low cost health care to children that didn't otherwise have access to it.  For over a decade, he served as the clinic's me...