MIDDLE-AGED WOMEN 40-60ish
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Oh, Momine, I think it is harder sometimes to deal with other's health problems than our own. I hope you get answers soon.
Little story about cicadas, there came a summer in my life when I thought the crickets were unusually noisy. This went on for a while and I tried to ignore it. Finally in February or there about, I asked my DS did he hear any crickets? He, of course, said no it's the middle of winter! Well, that's what my tinnuitus sounds like, I swear. Now I have hearing aids, so I can hear people talking over the chirping. The audiologist says it's my brain making noise where there is none. So crazy might explain it😝.
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Hugs Momine! This has to be so frustrating for you. I hope that does not come off sounding bad. Yourself and your family have earned some good living time. I hope this is an infection and your dear husband gets well very soon.
Thinking of you and your husband,
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Thinking of you and your husband both, Momine. I am glad you were able to drag your man to the doc, that is a tough job! Hope you find out more soon, and that whatever it is, is easily treatable. Glad the anti-b's are helping him to feel better already though. I will hold you both in my thoughts today, though I can't help feeling that's just not fair.
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I had gone back up the page to re- read, cause I didn't remember reading up there, and I even re-read my post about my teeth. I am pretty sure I didn't type "shucks"!! It must have been auto-correct. But i feel the same way, Momine. Well, fuck.
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Thanks all.
By the way, about those cicadas, have you ever heard one scream? I heard it the first time last week and it is a freaky sound.
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I almost want to hear them! I wonder if the naked and afraid people would eat them!
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Momine - you and your DH will be in my thoughts too. Hope the docs pay attention and you get a quick response.
Tomboy - people eat crickets & grasshoppers so I guess they'd eat cicadas. I don't think I've ever really seen one in 40 years - just the shells everywhere.
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Somebody must be eating them, then!!!
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HaHaHa - I can imagine people sneaking around my yard every night picking up cicadas before they "molt".
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Momine--praying for your DH.
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Minus and Native, thanks.
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FOUR MORE PAGES!!! We can make that goal folks.
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Momine, I am sure the waiting for this is equally as bad as all of the BC anxiety you have been thru'. Big mass on kidneys does not sound good, but identifying the problem comes first and here's hoping that resolving it follows shortly thereafter. Will try and check tomorrow for your post. I don't know how the sentiments have been in your family, but my family has kind of gotten used to me being the one to have all the travails. Heaven forbid my DH gets his own ailment...we have no experience along those lines at all!
Tomorrow, I am off early for the annual mammo. See there, Deb2012, I am not so remiss after all. However, I have graduated (backward) to just having screenings again--two squishes per boob, and it will no longer be same-day results. I will have to wait for the letter to arrive before I can exhale. I think a phone call would only mean one thing, so I sure don't want that.
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Momine, sorry to hear about your DH. All my fingers crossed for a good outcome for him. Hugs for you both.
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Eilmar - Here's hoping the Mammo wasn't too unpleasant and that you DON'T get a phone call.
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Yes to no phone call.
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Greetings ladies, Elimar, glad you're going for your mammo. I so enjoy seeing the banners change. Sorry to hear about Momine's DH worries. You may luck out. If the anti-biotic is working and it's related to the mass. Then it may be solely an infection w/o any cancer. If it wasn't having any effect, then it might be more worrisome. If the mass and the infection are unrelated, that's concerning. Let us know. My good friend is the one who had BC. Now her DH has melanoma. Same concept. We were always the "target", the suspect one. Shocking when it turns out that the DH grows a cancer also. Our dog is growing cancer. That will be another post. It's like a Honeymooners episode because it's not as cheery as an I Love Lucy. Stay tuned for that story.
I can't get over how so many of us are falling apart. Teeth, bones etc. I wonder if it would be statistically relevant if some research folks were to peruse various posts/threads on BCO and use them to do studies of side effects etc. based on our posts. We have our DX's at the bottom of the posts. I wonder how many years based on BCO posts was the average time lapse before recurrence for the unfortunate ones who get a recurrence? Clinicians ought to be able to get some type of credit by having to read various themes/threads so they know how we all really feel about what happens to us and the "marvelous" advancements that jump up and bite us in the ptootie years later.
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Well said, Deborah!
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Thanks all for the good thoughts. We got the report from the CT, but neither one of us can make out what it means. It has a lot of "possibly" "maybe" etc in it. We managed to track down a doctor (prime holiday time here) who offered to interpret tomorrow.
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It was 45 minutes from getting handed the clipboard to being back out the door. That was my mammo morning. I was wrong about just two squishes per boob tho'. They took two more on my treatment side. Like a nipple profile or something. My scar is close to that area, so maybe that is the deal; but at least I no longer have to get the magnification paddles so that is some progress, right? I looked on the screen and at a glance saw that my tissues are as dense as ever, so whitish all over but nothing that looked lumpy. Not at all worried and looking forward to the letter next week to make it official.
Sorry you have to deal with another day of suspense, Momine. Let us know.
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I don't post that much on BCO anymore, and mainly just on this thread. Let me just say, I will be happy if we do reach 30,000 (and or 1,000 pages) by thread-versary #6 on Aug. 22; l but if not, no big deal. Really. It will happen when it happens.
I have thoughts about this thread:
1) If I had been a more active hostess this past year, we would have been beyond 30,000 by now, but the fact is my mind does not dwell in the House of BC that much anymore. Good for me and anyone who has liquidated that piece of real estate also. If we fall a few post short of a celebration on Aug. 22, that's on me. But there will STILL be a celebration on that day. Consider this your invite.
2) Because many of this thread's "regulars" (birds of a feather, so to speak---the slightly nutty with a healthy dose of skepticism thrown in for good measure kind of folk) are now some years out from Dx, the thread has lost some of the immediacy and some of the BC relevance that it had when more of us were newly diagnosed. We are just not reading every journal article that comes down the pike anymore. That is too bad but, again, a natural happening over time. We are just not on the brink of insanity over treatment choices, so there is less of that.
3) This was and is a great group, IMO. Otherwise, I think I would be long gone. I would like to say thanks to each person who tagged this thread as a "favorite." (You have good taste!)
4) Someone, whose anonymity I will protect, recently opined that all the popular social threads have devolved into women bragging about themselves. Hahaha. Guilty as charged! I have regularly let my ego off the leash here, and if that was recognized and found to be annoying, I do apologize (not that I wouldn't do it again, mind you) but please realize that I was aware and laughing at myself even as I did it. This thread was tool to get me through the BC difficulties, and it served that end very well. This thread was MY therapy. Cheaper than a shrink.
5) Hope this thread will continue to attract Newbies and, with or without me, I hope it continues to provide information, support and humor to those in need of it. Also, hope it can steer away from the weather talk. In perpetuity...
Now, my thoughts turn to lunch...0 -
MmMMM, what's for lunch? I wanted to say thank you elimar, because this has been one of my faves, and one of these days I will treat myself from the very beginning, and really see whats up!!! That will be fun. Sorry for the extra views, i think thats just what they do now, I don't know, or maybe its just me. I have been complaining about my tx center for a long time now, but it just does really seem like a LOT of work to go through the annoyance of doing the work to get a new one. But hey, I am more willing now, cause what if I really really like my new team? Wouldn't that be much better than being pissed off at my old fuckface docs? Sure! Thanks for making such a good place for us el
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Not really posting to help meet the goal, more posting a bit of a mental set back. 2.5 years out, and like most of you, BC has taken its rightful place in the back of the room, only to rear its ugly head at mammo time or doctor's office. But yesterday a young gal I worked with posted on social media (oh why do people do this) that her mother had recently been diagnosed with a reoccurence in her spine. I feel horrible for her because her poor mom really had just a year from the time of finishing active treatment to experiencing pain that lead to this diagnoses.
The rational part of me understands that her cancer was a far different animal than mine, first diagnosed as stage IIIC. I'd be rather shallow and selfish to compare my diagnoses to her's. But I'm almost dreading going back to work (I teach school) and seeing this journey her mom is on through her eyes. Even as I emailed her to lend her my support and to help in any way, a small part of me wants to put blinders on and not look at this. I know people live long lives with a diagnoses of stage IV. I know there are many people who live with this situation as a manageable disease. I guess deep down I just don't want to acknowledge the possibility. I'm a hesitant adult, dragged kicking and screaming into facing my own mortality when diagnosed. You'd think a person on the cusp of 60 years of age would be more "mature" about life in general.
Oh well now that I've had my little pity party and mental glitch I guess it's back to the reality of understanding that worrying won't change things, except to waste my time. Count my blessings, pull on the big (and old) girl panties and move on. This is probably the only place to vent this without someone being mad or questioning my sanity (at least to my face). Read often, seldom post, but it's nice knowing everyone is out there.
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kkuziel, one "hesitant adult" to another, it is important to examine these feelings once in a while. I am experiencing something similar myself right now. A friend has a brother that has CRC, and she is feeling the need to share his treatment plan, his SEs, and even his emails to her with me. I have never met her brother; however, because she is a friend, I feel like I should supply what she is needing from me. I try to give some interpretive comments to help her better understand what is going on with him. Kind of doing my duty as a friend, but not really wanting to give CRC that much thought anymore either, truth be told. It's kind of weird.
After we spend all day every day thinking about cancer, only then can we realize what a blessing it is not to have to do that anymore. How lucky we are if we can even reach that point.
I would really like to express something... Remember back when you were a young(er) woman, before cancer. Someone might mention, "so-and-so has cancer," and you would have a reaction like, "Oh, that is terrible. Sorry to hear that," but you had no actual feeling to connect with that thinking. Guess what? Now you do. When you find out someone has cancer, you know the ordeal they will face...all the time that will be spent...getting their body cut...getting treatments that suck the life out...the coin toss on whether it's really going to be gone or not. Now you KNOW the REAL TRAGEDY involved when you hear about someone getting cancer. Terrible, isn't it?
I don't even have to take a poll. I know you all can feel it too.
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Yep. True. very true
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oh elimar, I remember saying more times than I care to admit when someone would say that so and so was getting tests for this or that, and they would finally disclose that instead of cancer it was colitis or, MS, or some other thing that wasn't cancer. Invariably someone else would say (even myself), "thank god, at least it wasn't cancer." Like we made cancer the worst evil in the world, the worst diagnosis one could hear. No wonder we are all terrorized by our own diagnosis. I now cring when the same situation occurs now and someone says that very thing and I'm sitting right there. You are right we all need to revisit our fears once in a while. Thanks for understanding my crazed moment
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kkuziel! Go and look at that 'crazy town' thread I told you about! Didn't you get a pm from me?
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El--happy for the good mammo experience!Very good observations about the natural evolution of threads on BCO.
Kkuziel--I don't see your reaction to your friend's news about her mom as a pity party or mental glitch.I see it as a normal reaction to hearing about bad news that could, conceivably, happen to us, that is a start reminder of how much we don't know about our futures.I am a hospice nurse and regularly meet women with a history of breast cancer, both dying of breast cancer and dying of another disease entirely, and have learned that it will bring me up short with the question of "will that be me someday?"I've also learned to take some time to feel the feelings and remind myself of why I chose the treatment options I did, and my personal plans for managing a recurrence or the emergence of mets, if that ever happens, and then move on.That being said, watching your friend's mom's journey through your friend's eye will probably be pretty hard.I'll be praying for you, and her.
El--yup.Very different reaction after being through the process myself.Very different.
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Momine: any news yet? Hoping that the antibiotics are helping.
Elimar: good that the mammo is over. Dense breasts, too? I thought mine would get less dense after hystrectomy, but not so far. And yes, it is a blessing when we do not have to think about cancer, every day and every hour. I wish that for all of us.
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Hi ladies, I was diagnosed last November, I am going through radiation now but I have to say that I don't think about BC everyday like I used to, I think about it maybe every other day, if that. I don't even really think about it when I'm driving to or from radiation, I just go through that motion. Is this normal to feel this way?? I feel like the worse part, surgery and chemo are behind me and I refuse to allow BC to rule my life. Have any of you felt this way? I spoke to one of my sisters about it and she said that she thinks that it's too soon for me to feel this way, but then she hasn't walked this road either.
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