Last Thursday we met with Zangmeister Cancer Center and got everything set up. On Monday and Tuesday, we met with OSU The James Cancer experts to get a 2nd opinion due to my highly critical case. We want to trust doctors, but when 3 lives are at risk, it’s hard. We ultimately decided to pursue my treatment with OSU at The James. They have the Stefanie Spielman Breast Cancer Center full of everything I’ll need over the next year. There is still a lot unknowns, but here’s the basic plan we are looking at.

1. Chemo from now until 2 weeks before delivering the babies.

2. Delivery of the babies around 37 weeks (end of January)

3. More chemo (a different, stronger kind that I can’t get now while pregnant)

4. Mastectomy surgery

5. Radiation

We are asking for lots of prayers, for everything. For the health of the babies, our sweet kids who need me, for healing, for Michael, for our parents and my sister Heather who will be helping us tremendously and picking up the pieces as we go on this journey.

Thanks for following along. We appreciate not being alone and being surrounded by lots of love and help.

On top of us being so concerned about the twins, this pregnancy has been terrible on my asthma. Michael had taken me to the ER on September 12 and September 26 because my wheezing and breathing were so bad. Both times I received lots of breathing treatments, a shot of steroids, and a steroid prescription to get me through the week and was in the ER for 2-2.5 hours max each time.

However, Monday 10/7, was different. I could barely take a breath. By the time I got to the ER, my oxygen levels were in the high 70s and I was considered hypoxic. The doctor team immediately said that I would have to be admitted to the hospital to determine the cause of all of these problems this month. Of course, I just wanted a quick fix and to go home, but it wasn’t an option.

I was rushed to St. Ann’s via ambulance and admitted for the night. I was given lots of breathing treatments, multiple rounds of steroids via IV, and I was on constant oxygen. Poor Michael slept on the chair in the hospital and Cindi took care of the kids at home.

I ended up staying all day Tuesday and Tuesday night and was released Wednesday around dinner time.

Although no perfect cause was found, the doctors gave me a long term asthma controller (which I didn’t have) and the pulmonologist discovered I could possibly have an aspirin allergy. My OB told me to take a low dose aspirin each day to lower my chances of high blood pressure with this pregnancy. I started taking that in early September, and that is when my asthma started to get completely out of control. Once I stopped taking the aspirin, I could finally breathe again.

We’re so so thankful for Michael’s parents and my parents who took care of the kids during my hospital stay. It certainly was not where I wanted to be, but it was necessary to figure out my breathing problems.

This was days before my biopsy. I already knew something could be wrong.

1 problem solved. Lots of problems waiting to be solved…

Due to the fact I’m carrying twins, my OB referred me to St. Ann’s Maternal Fetal Medicine Group. I saw them once in August and they confirmed the identical twin pregnancy, where the twins have their own sac but separate placentas, called a mo-di pregnancy. These appointments are very long, as they take about an hour to scan each baby and measure all the body parts.

On September 26, I went to another routine appointment to check on the babies. The scanning took almost 3 hours, so of course my instincts were telling me something was wrong. The ultrasound tech came back multiple times for multiple different views and pictures. Finally I met with the doctor in his office about the findings.

He was worried about the fluid levels of the babies. One big concern with twin pregnancies where the babies share a placenta is called Twin to Twin Transfusion Syndrome. He was worried that the very different amniotic fluid levels were the start of this syndrome. He considered us level 0, because the technical levels weren’t low enough for the diagnosis, but they were trending that way. He wanted to see me back in 3 days to check the levels again. If the levels continued to differ dramatically, we’d have to have inter uterine surgery in Cincinnati to correct the levels and save the babies.

This was also the appointment I found out the babies were girls! It so hard because minutes after I found out they were girls, I was hit with this news about their fluid levels. It certainly took the joy away of finding out I was carrying two little girls, because instantly the worrying started. I almost forgot to tell Michael we were having girls because I was so upset about the bad news.

All this happened 2 weeks before my cancer diagnosis. I had no idea things could get worse. In the meantime, our 2 little ones at home knew nothing of the worries that were going on in our minds.

Monday, October 14th, was the day of the diagnosis. I had met with a breast surgeon the week prior, the same day as my biopsy. She called with the news around dinner time. I was prepared, as I had already read through the findings on MyChart and googled every phrase that was used. I knew what she would say. Breast Cancer. You have breast cancer. The words almost didn’t hurt, like they weren’t meant for me, and were meant for someone else. Facing the reality that it was for me, that this was affecting my family, was still a long way off.

On Thursday, October 17th, we met with an oncologist. It went so fast. All my doctors talk about this cancer and say “if we take pregnancy out of it…” which of course is so infuriating. I’m not just pregnant, I’m pregnant with twins, and this pregnancy is not going smoothly. Doctors have to explain what they would do if I wasn’t pregnant, and then tell me how they will actually treat me.

My first day of chemo is already scheduled. Halloween of all days. Nothing spookier than that I suppose.