My diagnosis came after having battled DCIS two separate times (once in 2013 and again in 2015) over a four year period. After having a lumpectomy, radiation and a bi-lateral mastectomy, you would think that I had covered my bets against a re-occurrence. Heck, even my last breast surgeon told me, “You will never have breast cancer again.” I’ll also add that neither of my diagnoses were detectable on mammogram or  ultrasound.

Fast forward to February, 2017. After I was laid laid off, I was feeling stressed out and noticed that my blood pressure was quite high. I made an appointment with one of the general practitioners in my doctor office to get it checked out. The doctor I saw put me on a low level high blood pressure medicine and told me to get a blood draw in a couple weeks to check that the medicine was being tolerated.

That blood test showed high calcium. High enough that they wanted to test for hyperthyroidism. That was the most common cause of high calcium. The next most common was Hypercalcemia of Malignancy, which was a distant second. Matter of fact, on a blog post I read, they summed it up with, “Thankfully, hypercalcemia of malignancy is uncommon and generally not worth worrying about in most healthy people.  (Really, please don’t worry.  Kindly read on.)”

Sadly, after a series of additional blood tests, I was diagnosed with Hypercalcemia of Malignancy. I started seeing an oncologist (for the first time in all of my diagnoses) who put me on Palbocib (aka “Ibrance” which  is a targeted therapy classified as a “cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK) 4/6 inhibitor) along with Letrozole (decreases the amount of estrogen the body makes and helps to slow or reverse the growth of breast cancers).

And since my cancer likes to feast on Estrogen, monthly shots of Zolodex tossed me into menopause and kept my ovaries asleep.

After about six months, I grew tired of the monthly Zolodex shots so I had my ovaries removed.

I stayed on Letrozole and Ibrance until mid-2022. I had decided to have a procedure called y-90 to shrink my liver tumors. At the same time as this procedure, we learned that my cancer had started progressing again.

After the y-90 procedures (I ended up having two separate ones), I was switched to Ibrance and monthly Faslodex shots. To date, these treatments seem to be holding the line.

I still hold down a job and “act normal”. Since I do fear becoming a target of my employer for any future lay-offs (due to my high medical costs to their insurance), I keep my cancer diagnosis private. And I work very hard to keep it that way.

The pandemic had an upside for me in that many jobs went remote. I have been able to work remotely for over four years. Remote work makes doctor appointments and hiding cancer side effects much more manageable.

I started this blog as a resource to others out there like me. After my diagnosis, and at many points along the way, I found myself googling away for answers to the multitude of  “is this normal?” or “how do I best deal with [fill in the blank side effect]” type of questions. Hopefully, you’ll find something useful in these pages. I’m sorry that you find yourself here, but hope you find some answers.