patience

Hi Roxy,
I think the best advice is to eat well - that's if you can when you are going through treatment. You might ask if you can talk to a nutritionist at your cancer center. Some multivitamins might be too high in certain vitamins, but a nutritionist would be happy to check your choices and give you advice-
Patience

I chose not to use hormone therapy (tamoxifen which is an estrogen receptor mixed antagonist/agonist or any of the aromatase inhibitors which block estrogen synthesis occurring via aromatization). I did try tamoxifen for a short time, but I handle fluctuating hormones very poorly - headaches, nausea, mood swings. I gave it up quickly, never looked back and decided to listen to my intuition. However, some women have a high tolerance for hormones in many varieties and may tolerate tamoxifen or arimidex (and other RXs). What I think is important is to BELIEVE in your decision and move forward and allow others to be happy with their TX choices. Believing in your treatment is a major part of the healing - (statistically not just metaphorically). By the way I am a molecular biologist and did study my options thoroughly before feeling positive about the decision not to use hormone treatments for breast cancer treatment (referring to estrogen antagonists/aromatase inhibitors and not HRT).

maybe I could join the show with my disappearing nipple tattoo - it's as if it was never there...

Hi dazed and confused,
Have you had the other test. I had some bleeding two years after chemo (and my last regular period) and my gynocologist reccommended an endometrial biopsy. It was a relatively easy in office procedure and the tissue was fine. I don't like to rush to tests either but at least this one was relatively painles and quick!

Hi,
I agree with all said here. And it is good the radiologist is going to follow up the finding of epithelial hyperplasia with a mammogram in three months. I think if you feel at all like the surgeon did not answer your questions about what the epithelial hyperplasia was and what the concern was (did you have an excisional biopsy?) that you should ask for another appointment. Also, you can request a review of the pathology - which means another set of eyes (or actually three sets) reviewing the tissue without you having additional biopsies. It is great no cancer was found-

Does it help if you start back on a lower dose of the tamoxifen? So many changes in hormones - that has got to be rough! I hope you are feeling better soon-

If you are doing well with tamoxifen then that is great, however, if it is not going well look at the statistical results (Tamoxifen reduced the incidence of breast cancer by about 27 percent; this amounts to 4.97 breast cancer cases per 1,000 women in the tamoxifen group compared with 6.82 cases per 1,000 women in the placebo group. This is a difference of less than 2 per 1000 - not that 2 can be ignored....but the actual value of adding tamoxifen to your other treatments is small. I think we all need to make this decision based on how we feel and how tamoxifen makes us feel. I had a week from hell in 2001 when I started tamoxifen....and that was the last week I took it! It gave me a headache and affected my nood in a very negative way. I could not eat...or concentrate. Tamoxifen blocks an enzyme called protein kinase C (PKC) that regulates activities in brain cells. Recent studies show it can be effective in treating the mania in bipolar disorder. So perhaps for me it was triggering a depression. I just know I decided not to take it and not to feel guilty about this decision, but to make the best of other choices that would increase longevity - exercise, vegetables, poitive thinking, sleep, sunshine,life affirming activities.

I wanted to respond to the article (and then the dissing of the particular article mentioned in the conversation which was based on possible fraud) regarding plastics and breast cancer. There is a growing body of evidence in basic research that xenoestrogenic compunds released from plastic increase initial bc tumor growth and accelerate tumor growth (as well as angiogenesis). Many studies have found significant increases in breast cancer growth in vitro as well as in lab animals. Researchers have also identified some of the signaling pathways involved - and this could contribute to new treatments down the road. It is incredibly important work. There is also an association between increased levels of these chemicals in urine and/or blood and increased incidence of reproductive cancers in humans. Please go to pubmed and read some of the work - we do really need to reconsider using plastic for food, babies, etc. we need to be especially conscious of these chemicals released from plastics after diagnosis with bc. The followin is a link to one specific article....but there are many.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18252963?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

Patience

Just wanted to add my story to this thread. I had sterotaxic needle biopsy with the path report of low grade DCIS. My first excision to remove DCIS turned up invasive BC in the breast tissue and in a lymph node. So after axillary dissection (one more node positive out of the 36 nodes removed) and reexcision for clear margins, I chose to have a mastectomy. This was partly because I really needed to know what else might be hiding in my "dense" breast tissue and also because I have small breasts and was quite thin and was now also lopsided. Happily, the pathology after the mastectomy was cancer free. This was after my chemo - and I felt relief - that either the chemo had taken care of stray cells or there had been no measurable cancer cells after the second excision. The day I received this pathology report was wonderful -even my students and kids celebrated - it was truly the start of my new life after treatment.

If it had come back with cancer ....I would have removed the other breast and considered radiation. I think knowledge is helpfu no matter what you discover. You just need to know everything you can to make the best decisions.

Best to all of you,
Patience