Another crazy day...

Today Heather was prepared to get her liver biopsy done and then head home. Houston was/is supposed to get freezing rain so we wanted to head back asap. She was in surgery and then post-op until about 1:30. Then dad and MG picked us up and we hit the road. We had already accepted the fact that Heather would not start treatment until next Wednesday so we were just happy to be going home. We were about 45 min from MDA when we received a call from Dr. Alvarez's nurse. She said he wanted to see Heather asap, but she didn't say why. We actually turned around at the same exact exit as we did yesterday...weird.
Anyway, once we got back to MDA Dr. Alvarez told Heather that he had reviewed all of her tests, notes, etc. and had decided on a treatment plan. We were shocked because we weren't expecting this news. But in reality we receive unexpected news everyday so we shouldn't have been shocked. We had left dad and MG in the car so he had no idea what was going on, he was just driving around in circles waiting for us. :(
Dr. Alvarez said that the treatment plan would initially be the same one as her doctor in Oklahoma had suggested. He was much more positive about the outcome though. He said the scary mortality statistics include everyone in the world and people outside of the US don't have access to the drug herceptin because it's not approved there. He said this treatment is the best to use to shrink the tumors. He said if it doesn't work as well as he would like then there are 4-5 more options. He didn't really mention the research trial, he just expressed numerous times that this is the best option for right now. It was a little overwhelming for Heather (and me) to hear that she was going to start chemo in 15 min. They shuttled us upstairs to the chemo department and put us in a room and got started. We barely had time to call our family to tell them what was going on before they had her hooked up and going.
Neither one of us brought anything to do because we weren't expecting 3.5 hours of chemo so it was sad when they made us turn off our cellphones. Now the Ipad is the only source of entertainment. The 'good news' is that she'll be able to do her weekly treatments in Oklahoma or wherever she wants. The doctor here will communicate with her doctor back home and then she'll come back for some follow-up tests in 8 weeks or so. The doctor says the chemo is fairly mild so the side effects hopefully won't be too bad. She has been so strong the last 4 hours! I am so proud of her! My anxiety was out of control when we found all of this out so I can only imagine how she was feeling. We knew this day was coming, we just weren't necessarily prepared. I really think we'll actually be able to go home tomorrow. And at least we finally have a game plan...the chemo is almost done so we are going to head back to the hotel. We'll keep you posted...
-Heidi