Starting Chemo September 2015; join us!
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Jabe that sucks.
Im in a similar boat. My D stopped for 3 days when expected and just started back up again. It's so frustrating.
I'm also finally starting to be able to taste food again, just in time for my nose and cheekbones to be covered in a red rash. Last night I was experimenting to see if anything would help make it subside. I took benedryl (in case it was an allergic reaction thing) - nothing. I moisturized the heck out of it - nothing. Last round I tried to dry it out - made it worse. I have no idea what else I can do.
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I'm using benedryl cream on the rash. It helps the itch but it doesn't fade the rash.
Jabe sorry about the D. It comes and goes for me.
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thank you both!! I just thought at this point in the cycle id be in the clear...sigh!!
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I don't think it's ever in the clear during chemo. Lol!
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Annie - *hugs* I'm trying to decide whether to dress up as Sinead O'Conner for Halloween, a pirate, or uncle Fester. Did you get any popcorn from the boyscout?
Octogirl - my group actually looked at my numbers and told me to get the flu shot as long as it wasn't the live vaccine. I wonder what the difference is. (Although, if you already have a fever, they wouldn't want you getting the shot anyway.) Just got it yesterday - Nurse reminded me that people don't get the flu from the flu shot, but can have a local/site occurrence. In any case, no low grade fever or fatigue yet (beyond the usual). *crosses her fingers*
Italychick - Oh my, love it! My baby boy subscribes to the Unicorn Ice Cream School of Medicine thought too.
https://youtu.be/YbYWhdLO43QIn other news: My sister got her genetic test done. She is completely free of all BRCA mutations! I wish there was a "correct" way to react to that news. I smiled. And the first thing I remembered was the bet from when we were teenagers and had first been told by Mom and Dad about the mutation.
Me: "$20 says it's the square heads that got the gene (Me and my Brother)."
Sister: "$20 says I'm the only one who got it."
Me (Almost 20 years later): "Just need to get <our brother> tested now. BTW, you owe $20 to the pool."That was probably a very confusing text. I wonder if she even remembers. I can't help but think about it all the time.
Would I have done anything differently if I had taken it more seriously? (I still think having kids while the Army was threatening to deploy me would have been irresponsible.) Would I have exercised more to make myself less of a target? Avoided sugar for 20 years?
I love my sister so much. God knows how her life might have changed if the results had come back positive. She's 30 and I'm so glad she's not going to be frantically shacking up with her boyfriend to have kids before it's "too late." I'm glad she'll never have to wonder if her future children have a time bomb ticking away. I'm glad that her odds of living to be 100 just went up tenfold. I'm glad that her loved ones will probably never have to see her scarred and mutilated by surgeries. I'm glad she'll probably never have to explain to her starving baby that her breasts are "broken." I'm glad she'll never have to contemplate IVF to avoid watching her own daughter go through hell. I'm glad she won't find herself curled up in a pile at work crying, "WHY ME?" and hoping nobody notices.0 -
Jabe mine comes and goes as well. I carry immodium in my purse.
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DL ..great news for your sister and everything you said is true. But remind her that there are many of us (myself included) with no family history so don't slack on the screening. It's terrifying to know that it will hit anyone, without rhyme or reason, as well as those with the gene. No complacency allowed
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Oh, I know Lindy. I'm having a bad/emotional day. 75% no history. 1 out of 8 get BC. Etc. Heck, any of us could get hit by a truck tomorrow. There are no guarantees. My mom and aunt are completely untouched by cancer (so far) and have had to watch a parent and a child go through cancer (Breast, Testicular). I'm just saying I want to be happy for my sister. At the same time, I want to quit feeling so damn bad for myself. I keep putting on a brave face, especially at work, because who wants to be around the sad person? I started bawling in bed last night and after the 3rd time, my husband got cranky that I was keeping him up. Meanwhile, he confides that he cries in the car every so often. I know my Mom must be falling apart over everything that's going on - but if I ever show a sign of weakness around her, she'll lose it. I want to strike up conversations about happy things, but all this other stuff is always on my mind. I need to laugh right now. Meanwhile, it feels like that blubbery time of the month - but I'm supposed to be well into Chemopause, right? ARGH!
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Lisa you do need a laugh and a hug. Its hard to feel good about other people when everything feels like doooooom. But you are mentally healthy enough to know you need to just roll with your feelings when they come. Its an awful cancer roller coaster.(((Hugs)))
Meanwhile sitting here fat, bald, haggard and constantly cough peeing I feel like this...
I should have bought the popcorn!
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*smirks* Thanks Annie. Popcorn sounds good right now too. And Chocolate. Stupid heartburn....
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Many here have donated . Thank you !........Wandering around and cheerleading again
Donate today, make a difference directly in all our lives. By supporting BCO, we support each other. Thanks and Hugs
https://community.breastcancer.org/forum/110/topic/834331?page=1
Link to the mainboard donation page
https://secure3.convio.net/bco/site/Donation2?df_i...
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Chocolate popcorn!
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THAT^
Researching desserts that don't cause heartburn... looks like fruit/berries (hah!), sorbet, and some frozen yogurt. Also Champagne and super dark chocolate. I may have to make a detour after work today.
In case anybody else is having a bad day, these seem to be helping:
https://denise4health.wordpress.com/2012/02/24/why...
http://copingmag.com/cwc/index.php/article/emotion..0 -
To plagiarize shamelessly, my Round 3 A/C chemo is "in the books"! Yeah! Only one more to go in early November.
Grilled my PA on predicted duration for all phases of treatment and I will still be hanging out on this forum next June. Yes, my treatment plan is t h a t l o n g ........ *sighs*
I'm hoping the A/C rounds are the roughest and that I tolerate 12 weeks of Taxol (which will start in November) well.
(She also said the runny nose is caused by losing my nose hairs to the chemo and that this side effect is for the duration. Glad we buy Kleenex at Costco!)
<<<HUGS FOR ALL>>>
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Did you guys see this article about breast cancer screening?
http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/20/health/new-acs-breas...
What do you make of this:
"There's the risk of a false positive, plus the risk that a mammogram could catch a very small breast cancer that will go away on its own, or never progress to the point that it hurts a woman. In other words, a mammogram could catch a tumor that isn't really worth catching.
But since doctors can't reliably discern the harmful from the harmless cancers, they treat them all. This means some women are getting potentially harmful treatments, such as radiation, chemotherapy and surgery, when their tumor would never have caused a problem, Brawley says.
A Canadian study looked at 44,925 women who were screened for breast cancer, and 106 of them fell into this category and were treated for breast cancer "unnecessarily," according to a review in the New England Journal of Medicine."
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Super grats, Lisa! It's wonderful to be able to say 75% through the hard stuff, isn't it? What are they doing to you after the Taxol?
Side note: I had a runny nose this morning too; I thought it was temporary flu shot side effects. I hadn't even checked my nose hair.
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My nose hair is gone and my nose is also super runny (annoying). Plus I have a rash all over my face - glamorous, huh?
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edwsmom, I literally just finished reading the same article in Yahoo. I think a lot of women on this board including myself would've been screwed if I had waited til 45 to get screened.
Big question now (from me) is, how harmful would bi-annual screening be? Since that would be how my MO will be watching me. Not to mention the nuc med they'll be pumping me with for my MRIs.
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I posted the article on pushing mammos to 45 on the main chemo board. I can't think of a reason to push it out. It's not like there's a decrease in bc in young people is there? I didn't get a mammo from at 44-50, and at 50 it happened because I started feeling pain. BC takes a long time to grow, even grade 3s. I came out with a 7 cm tumor. If I had kept with my yearly testing, maybe much earlier it would have been caught.
The thing is how many people put it off. You turn 40 then think eh wait till 41, 42... I did that too. Now that I just turned 51, colon cancer screening should be on my radar. Of course it isn't now but I know if I didn't have bc I wouldn't be jumping to get this done because they say 50 but what's a couple more years to wait for this uncomfortable screening, esp if there is no fam history.
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So hair and nose hairs are gone.... anyone seeing eyebrows/eyelashes gone yet? Or is that at the end/after chemo? I'm more concerned about that than the hair.
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Edwsmom, that's what this earlier campaign was all about. From what I can tell, it's all the insurance agencies getting into a huff about all the money they have to shell out for screening. After a false positive mammogram, an ultrasound and an MRI are standard courses of action. If you have a good radiologist, they're going to be able to filter out the false positives at a really high rate. Even the biopsies are relatively non-invasive these days (a single needle? Wasn't a big deal). https://www.change.org/p/u-s-house-of-representati...
http://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/Page/...
Again, I think it's a money issue. There's nothing to stop the doctor & patient from saying, "Well, let's wait a little while and see if this gets bigger."
I looked through the data - the charts at the end basically told me that after all the screening that's available, 5-7% of women are subjected to a false-positive biopsy. The Canadian study says only 2% result in a false positive. Meanwhile, ~0.1% of women who get screened will have their cancer missed entirely (Meaning 99.9% get caught?). I remember the sleepless nights of the Doc's telling me "it's probably nothing." And yeah, I'd love to spare somebody that agonizing wait if they're clear. Meanwhile, it's a drop in the bucket compared to watching my cousin wait over a year to get the lump on his testicle rechecked (size of a lemon by then). He survived metastatic testicular cancer only because the 2nd doctor he went to see did not mess around (Surgery within 2 days of examination; chemo within weeks).
I feel like we just had this conversation, the doctors only recommend early screening (25, 35, whatever) if there's a strong family history. Meanwhile, only 25% of the population has this family/genetic history. Everybody else is random.People are getting cancer younger and younger - how many people in this forum alone had their first mammogram at 40? 35? 45? And it saved them? At least 1 that I know of. I'm just glad, I was actively working with my breasts and found the lump in time. Doctors push back on doing scans on people under 35 because of the dense tissue. They KNOW not to overrreact.
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Has anyone every heard of over-diagnosis of cancer or a cancer going away? That part of the article shocked me...
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I would push for an MRI starting at 35 personally. I would prefer less radiation over the long haul but the cost is $$$.
Still have my nose hairs.
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Somebody posted an article about a woman who made her cancer go away by drinking carrot juice. It's one of those tales of "probably false-positive" that turned somebody into a hippie millionaire by selling her book. Often calcifications and scar tissue will show up on a mammogram as potential cancer, but turn out to be nothing.
I'm not sure how I feel about the phrase "over-diagnosis of cancer." When my grandmother was going through treatment, there was an "over-treatment using hysterectomies" so they sat and waited and watched her ovaries swell up to the size of cantaloupes. She died in her 40s when I was 1 year old because they wanted to be more conservative.
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I had my first mammogram at 35 due to my aunt and cousin having had breast cancer. I was dx at 43.
I just have never heard of any instance of someone being diagnosed with cancer and treated (unnecessarily) because the cancer would have otherwise gone away on it's own. That blows me away.
I guess the reason why this is so interesting to me is that I have an occult breast cancer. Meaning - no primary site has ever been found. My cancer was found in one enlarged lymph node (about 2cm), picked up on the mammogram. The biopsy on the lymph node confirmed breast carcinoma. But despite 2 MRIs and a PET/CT nothing found in either breast.
So did my initial cancer go away? Or is it there but microscopic?
I'm going on Monday for a second opinion with a breast surgeon. Because of my particular diagnosis my current BS and MO differ in opinion on treatment. BS says there's no need for mastectomy just radiation and lymph node removal. MO says definitely mastectomy and radiation, just to be sure. The research apparently says in occult breast cancer there's no difference in outcome among those 2 treatment paths.
So, on Monday I'm going to discuss this with another BS to see what she thinks I should do.
Would I love to not have to have mastectomy - hell yes! But, will I live the rest of my life afraid because I didn't or regretting that I didn't because it comes back?.....
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its obamacare. They don't have enough money so they are starting to push for delaying things like this to save money, meanwhile how many die? I'd rather get treated early for something that might be nothing than wait and die.
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"...critics said the cancer society looked only at whether screening saved a woman's life, and not at whether screening caught a cancer early, so the woman could avoid the most drastic treatments, such as chemotherapy or mastectomy."
Definitely money. Apparently quality of life doesn't matter.
Edwsmom, you keep that breast if you want to. Even for those of us with a locatable tumor, there is no difference between a unilateral mastectomy and a lumpectomy with radiation (risk percentage-wise anyway). It might be different from a peace of mind standpoint. I didn't want to be lopsided if I didn't have to be. The only reason they should be scaring you into doing anything different to totally reduce your risk is if a bilateral mastectomy is on the table for you - is it?
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As of now, bilateral mastectomy hasn't come up....we were going to revisit that conversation when the genetic testing came back.
I was negative for BRACA1/2. But I did come back with a variant called BRIP1 that they don't know much about yet. The genetic counselor said it was unlikely to change any treatment plan.
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(((((Southern)))) Sending hugs to you!
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Me too.....
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