lanihardage

Mary, the metal mouth will be pretty much gone by the 3rd week of each treatment, thank God.

Otter, I'm with you on the hair. I have totally hated it every time I look in the mirror for the past 4 months. My kids and spouse are used to it, but I'm not! Maybe in another month or so, I can stand to look at it. Even though I'm over chemo (10 weeks since last tx) people in stores still look at me funny. Some are very soliticous (can I carry that for you?) which is funny since I have all my normal energy. Guess I have to be the cancer poster child for a few more months.

Elizabeth, hard to believe you have only one left. I remember when you first started! Yay!

--Lani

Laura, you did it! Now you see how strong you are! Enjoy Thanksgiving -- even if you are tired.--Lani

Thanks, Laura and Lisa. It's great to hear that other sane people made the same decision!

Tamara, it will get better! For me it took about a month after my last tx to start saying I was over it and about 8 weeks to feel pretty normal. Laura, not everyone loses eyebrows and lashes -- I didn't lose any noticeable amount of them.

It's nice to hear from you all, even though I don't post very often. I check once a day at least. You all were such a great support to me going through chemo, and now I feel back to normal except for the hair thing and adjusting to the anti-estrogen medication. I'm on Aromasin, just finished the samples and found out today it's going to cost me $50 a month. I guess it's worth it, but that's a lot. I have some very short hair coming in, but nothing that I want to show anyone except the family at home. They don't even look twice, but I still have a hard time looking at it in the mirror.

Laura, the surgery didn't hurt me that much, either. I only took pain meds for maybe two days, and it wasn't bad at all. I had 10 nodes taken out. You will worry about it ahead of time but afterward you will say, well, it wasn't that bad. Kind of like chemo. Except for Lisa and Marcia, who can truly say, it WAS that bad. And Jill too?

Love to you all, Lani

Sherrie, metal mouth went away completely by about 12-14 days post tx4 (though gradually better after the first week or so).

Donna, it was a decadron taper and it helped a lot for me, because after the 2-day decadron I crashed in bed for 4 days. I stayed out of bed the last two treatments except for an occasional nap, though I did sit and read a lot. It (the tape) enabled me to get my kids to school and pick them up, stuff I really had to do. I had to ask for it.

Annie, I'm on Aromasin, another aromatase inhibitor with a different mechanism than Femara and Arimidex, because I couldn't tolerate Arimidex (caused joint pain). For all of these inhibitors, the oncs generally do a baseline bone density and bone scan and then repeat I think yearly. With the aromatase inhibitors they don't need to check your estrogen levels because your body makes essentially no estrogen. Be prepared for some mighty hot flashes -- for me they were stronger than the ones with menopause -- but they settle down after a couple of weeks.

Rickster, I had a fair amount of stubble left by tx 4, and now it's filling in with fuzz, about 7 weeks out from tx 4. I never lost eyebrows or lashes, at least not noticeably, so I guess it varies by individual. For the watering eyes, I used Hypo Tears (or any OTC tear replacement), and it seemed to help.

I think the twitches are part of the neuropathy. For a few days of each tx (2-4) I had a left-side eye twitch and clicking in my left ear. Weird stuff!

Katie, I had some twitching and tingling with tx 2, a little more with tx 3 and 4, but now 6 weeks out from #4 it's gone.

My oncologist says Zometa is off-label for early BC until it gets FDA approval or you have a dx of osteoporosis. Otherwise, insurance won't cover it. She thinks it will be approved some time in the next 9 months based on results at the summer BC meeting.

Sue, that's the ASCO meeting ( American Society of Clinical Oncology), and the report said "The addition of the bisphosphonate to endocrine therapy and ovarian suppression improved disease-free survival by 36% and recurrence-free survival by 35%" in pre-menopausal women with early BC. Pretty impressive