Jon writing: I never thought I would say I am excited that Laura is starting chemotherapy this week, but I am! The waiting and doing nothing and waiting for appointments and results is brutal. Laura is starting a three chemical mix of chemo this Friday Sept. 14th in Portland. She has to go to Portland this week because our medical oncologist is only in Astoria Tuesday and Wednesday every week. The plan is to then switch to Wednesdays for chemo in Astoria. She will be getting chemo every 3 weeks for 18 weeks or a total of 6 doses. The drugs: she is getting Taxotere, Carboplatin and Herceptin. Then the day after chemo she will get another shot of Neulasta which is not a chemo drug but to help with various side affects I believe. Then her Herceptin will continue every 3 weeks for and additional 11 doses. Herceptin is to fight her type of breast cancer which is HER2 Positive (3+). The good thing about chemo first is that it is a systemic treatment which will kill and destroy any cells or tiny masses that have moved throughout the body. HER2 positive cancer is much more likely to be invasive to other body parts than other types of breast cancer, but herceptin is very effective in destroying it. Herceptin has only been available for about ten years so we are very thankful that it is available now! Tomorrow, Laura goes to Columbia Memorial Hospital in Astoria and gets an echocardiogram. With 4% of patients, herceptin can have negative effects for the heart so they need a baseline on Laura who is incredibly fit. We went out to dinner since we didn’t get home till six. At dinner, Tim said that breast cancer used to be one of the most dangerous and deadly cancers for women. We looked at him in awe. He said ya, I learned that from South Park! South Park also said that there had been a lot of recent research and it is much more controllable than 30 years ago…