Breast cancer patient faces infection, pain
For cancer patient Jill Brzezinski-Conley, pain is now the price of living.
Even normal things like cooking and gardening leave her breathless, tired and in pain. Making matters worse, an infection recently forced doctors to remove her pain pump and try new combinations of pain pills to relieve her suffering.
“It’s like I can’t catch a break,” said Conley, whose battle against incurable breast cancer is being chronicled by USA TODAY. “I used to pray, ‘Can I have one good week?’ Now it’s like, ‘Can I have one good day?’…. I feel like I’m 100 years old inside.”
Conley, 38, has faced one setback after another in her six-year battle. Cancer has invaded her bones and left lung and spread significantly over the last few months in her liver. She remains committed to her dying missions — building her Jill’s Wish cancer charity and spreading a message that true beauty is defined by kindness, confidence and love - and can never be erased by illness. But her wavering energy means she can’t do nearly as much as she’d like.
Conley is in the hospital almost as much as she’s home these days, with 17 admissions this year. During a recent stay at Norton Brownsboro Hospital in Louisville last week, she was bloated and visibly exhausted as she lay in her bed awaiting a breathing treatment and her first-ever blood transfusion. Beneath tubes and wires connecting her to medical machinery was a pink-and-white blanket from a friend, covered with the word “love,” one of the many reminders of the support that sustains her.
As soon as a nurse came in, she asked for pain medication. She lifted her pajama top to show the bandage over a large wound from surgery to remove infected tissue around where the pain pump used to be.
She hopes for just a little relief — enough to enjoy the special moments she has left, such as her 7th wedding anniversary and her husband Bart’s 42nd birthday on Nov.1.
“It’s just so hard. You just never get used to seeing her like that,” Bart said. “But I still have hope.”
Agony of the fight
The Conleys have spent most of their married life dealing with cancer. The diagnosis came about eight months after the wedding and was followed by a double mastectomy, chemotherapy, radiation and breast implant surgery. The left implant later had to be removed when radiation burned a hole in it.
For a while, it all seemed worth it. After two years of treatment, doctors declared Conley cancer-free. But it would prove only a short reprieve; in early 2012, tests showed the cancer had returned in her sternum. It’s been spreading relentlessly ever since, bringing breathlessness, weakness and pain.
As breast cancer takes toll, patient faces more setbacks
Doctors implanted the pain pump in Conley’s body this winter to provide quick relief, and at first, Bart said, “it made a huge difference.” But Conley’s oncologist, Dr. Janell Seeger of Norton Cancer Institute, said it soon became problematic, requiring multiple hospitalizations for things like repositioning and replacing it.
The hospitalizations kept Conley from some planned speaking engagements and breast cancer events during this Breast Cancer Awareness Month. But she was well enough to meet boxing icon Muhammad Ali for the second time when Sports Illustrated renamed its legacy award after him on Oct. 1. And she attended a golf tournament fundraiser a week later for Jill’s Wish, which raises money for other families facing cancer.
Not long after all this activity, however, she woke up in agony — “the worst pain I’d ever been in." She spiked a fever of 102.6. At the hospital, doctors found a staph infection around her pain pump and performed the surgery to take the pump out. She later needed a “debridement” to remove more infected tissue.
The surgeries left a large, red, open wound, which shocked her; “it looked like a shark bite.”
The operations also sapped her blood and energy, leading to the transfusion.
Conley stayed at Norton Brownsboro until Sunday, getting a steady stream of visits from relatives and friends. Her mother, Rosemary Duchon, flew to Louisville from Las Vegas on a one-way ticket and stayed in her hospital room. When Conley wasn’t sleeping, the two spent hours talking or binge-watching Lifetime movies, with Conley eating “all the ice cream in the hospital.”
“I couldn’t get here fast enough,” Duchon said. “I remain positive, yet I’m a realist, too…We have to think one day at a time now.”
Next steps
Bart said it’s been tough to watch his wife endure all the recent complications of her disease.
“Her body needs to fight the cancer," he said, "not infections and other things.”
Seeger expects fewer such problems now that the pain pump has been removed. As for the cancer, Seeger said Conley's current chemo regimen is controlling the disease fairly well for now, except in her liver, which “is a vital organ that we need to keep happy.”
So doctors are planning to give Conley an infusion of microscopic radioactive beads in her liver. If all goes well, the new treatment should begin within the next couple of weeks.
Pain control will also be a priority going forward, Seeger said, and it could take a little bit of time to find the exact medications and dosages.
“We’re not going to make her pain-free, but we’re trying to control it so she can maintain her quality of life,” Seeger said. “She’s obviously got a lot of inner strength.”
After coming home to her apartment after her long hospitalization, Conley had some good days and some difficult ones. Her mom, who soon plans to get a place nearby, stayed over, helping change Conley's wound dressings and give her antibiotics, and they planned to have a home health aide visit once a week. But Wednesday night, Duchon said she was running a low-grade fever and feeling terrible, so she landed in the hospital yet again. Her fever had gone down by Thursday morning, but she still felt sick.
Spending so much time in the hospital, Conley knows she won’t be able to travel as much as she once did or be as active as she once was. But she’s determined to continue her missions, spend time with friends and family and live as normal a life as possible.
Even at the risk of more pain, she refuses to wither in bed.