A New Chapter

 About a week before Thanksgiving we found out that Tabi has breast cancer. After a lot of tests and visits, we learned it was Stage 2, Grade 2 Ductal Carcinoma. We spent the following days/weeks getting all kinds of test, and getting a treatment plan. Thursday this week the treatment starts with the 1st round of chemo. I've never been the type of person that lives 'one day at a time' but now I'm forced to.

There's a lot going on in my head, and the first couple of weeks were really rough. Thankfully I still had regular visits scheduled with my grief counselor, and had a place to vent and get a third person view of my thoughts.

The hardest thing to think about currently is the lifestyle change. Tabi and I have both almost completely avoided doctors, clinics and prescription medication our entire lives, and now we have a 'regular' parking spot in the garage at the oncology center. There's also about 6 years start to finish on our current treatment road map, which is completely outside of my ability to process if I try to think about it.

Thankfully, I'd been working really hard the last several months with a new hire to separate myself from many of my day-to-day duties at The Gutter Guy. I'm not NOT needed regularly by any stretch, but I can be away multiple days in a week and the company more or less functions without me hovering. (still a lot of phone call time, but that's manageable)

The news came smack in the middle of the slow season with almost no work on the schedule, but 2 weeks later the phones and emails jumped up to a healthy volume and we are currently scheduled enough to make do through the end of the year.

There has been a lot of support, and very little negative so far. (I'm sure the Christmas pictures later this week will skew that a littlešŸ˜„) Some of Tabi's customers started a GoFundme right away and that helped tremendously to pay the myriad of  doctor bills that came like a wave. Speaking of that, we've never had insurance before, we've shopped nearly every year since ACA in 2012 but because of the business structure we have, nothing has ever been remotely affordable. So we expected to go into this $200k-ish ordeal cash-pay.

In the first week, several people independently referred us to one particular 'insurance lady' who supposedly worked with self employed families like us. Not expecting much, I contacted her and within minutes she had us covered on an ACA plan that covered 70%, but that we qualified for an out-of-pocket cap of $1100 per year, making it a nearly 100% coverage plan... I cried on the phone. ..and called back an hour later to make sure I had actually understood the plan correctly. So that was a huge blessing and while we'll end up about $11k out of pocket this year, come January it won't be an issue anymore.

The doctors have all been great so far, and were very helpful in making a treatment plan that didn't wait, but still made sure the most expensive parts didn't have to come before the insurance starts.

The road map for the treatment is currently;

2 months 1st type of chemo

Chest port installation surgery

2 months 2nd type of chemo

healing period

Lumpectomy and Lymph node removal (just 1 node)

healing period

4-6 months of Radiation

5 years of Estrogen blocker (Estrogen Receptor Positive Cancer)

With this treatment and cancer combo, survival rate is around 87% which is not exciting, but could be much worse.

All that's left to do now is to take it one day at a time, and as I said at the start, I'm not experienced in that department so it's a learning curve.

Here's to tomorrow.


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