Starting Chemo October 2021

Hello Sadie,

Wow, that's a lot to take on. My kids are 17, 15, and 13 year old twins. My role in their lives is mostly that of a consultant now, as they are pretty independent. This would have been logistically a lot harder when they were the age of your little ones. At that stage, they sucked up every ounce of energy I had and then some. I hope you are able to get some help. I'm so sorry you have to do this right now and hope we can support each other through it. What chemo are they going to give you?

I don't know what my oncologist thinks of red meat, as it's never been a part of my diet to begin with, so we didn't discuss it. She told me that chicken and eggs are a problem because they are high in Omega-6, which is inflammatory and increases the risk of recurrence (as well as sugar, gluten, and processed foods.) I did find an article online that compared Omega 6 levels in various meats. Chicken and eggs are the worst. Turkey is a little better. Grass-fed beef is the best, but grain-fed beef is not good at all. You can improve eggs by buying Omega 3 eggs or pasture raised eggs. They tend to be both higher in Omega 3 and lower in Omega 6.

As far as I can tell, all of the dietary stuff she gave me is lifelong, not just to get through chemo. The idea is to eat foods that help reduce the risk of recurrence and avoid stuff that increases that risk. Cooked mushrooms (particularly Asian varieties) are apparently a wonder food when it comes to cancer. They create proteins that can bind to cancer cells and mark them for destruction by the immune system. My stepmother told me she knows of a clinic in China that treats cancer solely by prescribing various types of mushrooms. Foods high in antioxidants, such as berries, are also good.

I am really just at the beginning of all of this, so I'm trying replace one meal a week with stuff that she recommends and see how it goes. My stepmother is going to bring over a book she found on integrative oncology, which has multiple chapters about food and cancer. That's written by the woman who trained my oncologist, so I imagine it lays out the principles in a little more detail. I'll send you the name of it when I get it if you are interested.

All the best!

Hello all,

Reading through everyone's introductions, it sounds like fear is something we're all dealing with. The worst part for me is just not knowing how my body will react. Some advice I read was to focus on dealing with what is rather than stressing yourself out with what might be. That seems like good advice, but hard to really do that when you are playing the waiting game. I pretty much feel the same way I did about the surgery. I want to start because I hate not knowing what I'm dealing with. At the same time, I am dreading it because you can't exactly look forward to suffering. Now that the surgery is behind me, I can say that dreading it was worse than dealing with it was when it happened. I sure hope chemo will be the same.

I'm coping by trying to put my mental energy into preparing for things that are highly likely and controlling the things I can control. So I'm eating up (both literally and figuratively) the diet stuff because it's really challenging to do and it occupies my mind with something proactive. This week I learned how to make a lentil soup and how to make a version of tuna helper that's gluten-free, dairy-free, and sugar-free. I'm lucky because my mother-in-law lives with us so she and I have been bonding over how to make the food we enjoy in new ways. As long as I don't try to eat out, this anti-inflammatory stuff is actually making me feel great and I'm not hungry or suffering from cravings. The only struggle I'm having with it is loose stools from all the fiber, so still working on figuring that out.

The other prep work I'm doing is trying to tackle hair loss. I cut off all my hair yesterday, so my teenagers could make all of their jokes when I still feel well enough to have a sense of humor about it. They said I am reminding them of all their trans friends and gave their dad a hard time about going on a date with his new boyfriend. In a lot of ways, I certainly do feel like breast cancer is robbing me of my femininity. It's already taken my breast, now my hair, and soon it will shut down my ovaries. My daughters really hate it because I just don't look like mom anymore. So, it's an opportunity to teach them that who we are really doesn't change just because our appearance does, which is not a bad lesson for 13 year old girls.

Yesterday, I had the port placed and today I went hat shopping with my stepmother. The UCSF cancer center has a wonderful gift shop where all the proceeds go to fund cancer treatment and research. We had a lot of fun and I found some really cute stuff there, so the hair loss bit is feeling less scary because now I have all these adorable new hats to wear. Besides, I work in customer service and people can be really awful sometimes, so perhaps with my new cancer look they'll be slightly more compassionate and less likely to throw abuse my way, which would lower my stress levels substantially. Okay, that last one is probably just wishful thinking, but hey, trying to stay positive here.

So glad to hear the first treatment wasn't that bad for you, Noodlesg. Fingers crossed that day 2 continues to be tolerable!

I am officially finished with pre-chemo prep. I start tomorrow. The last step was a spa weekend with my sisters, which generated some stories that I thought might make you all laugh. I suppose I have to honestly thank cancer for this last weekend, as it's something I've never done before and both of my sisters had to play the cancer card to get the time off work.

Unfortunately, my mastectomy swimsuit and sports prosthesis still haven't arrived yet, so I took my old bathing suit, which doesn't fit right at all anymore. After spending a morning fighting with the swimsuit, I finally decided that I don't care what a bunch of strangers that I will never see again think of my body and decided to go naked like everyone else in the hot springs. Now, that is something I never did before the mastectomy, so it was kind of a big deal to me. When I look in the mirror, the term Amazon Warrior Queen is what comes to mind. (Legend has it that the Amazon warriors would cut off a breast to facilitate archery). Between the long scar where my breast used to be on the right side, and the bumps and bruising on the left side where they placed the port, I've really been thinking I should go into acting because I certainly look like I've survived a battle in the Middle Ages. So, needless to say, when I decided to shed the clothes and rig a flotation device that would keep the port dry, I knew my upper torso would be incredibly exposed and figured that putting up with the stares would just be the price I had to pay for the freedom, comfort, and luxury of floating outside in warm water.

What surprised me was the complete and utter lack of attention I received. One woman even walked up to us and chatted for about ten minutes without ever giving any sign whatsoever that she noticed anything remotely odd about my appearance. My sisters, who have spent much more time in these sorts of settings than I have, thought it's partially because social norms dictate that people give each other privacy by not looking. That makes sense to me because, while I saw a lot of naked men, I certainly didn't look closely enough to form any sort of opinion (even just in my own head) about the quality of their anatomy. The entire experience was rather healing regarding the whole body image issue of breast cancer. I really do believe that if God is sending me this challenge, there is something I'm supposed to learn from it. This weekend taught me to stop worrying about how the world will react to my missing body part. If they didn't care even when I was fully naked, I'm pretty sure I'm the only person I need to feel beautiful for.

With that goal in mind, I bought some new earrings so I can stop feeling like my super-short haircut makes me look trans (I serve a lot of trans men in my practice and they are beautiful beings, but that's never been my personal style) and now I'm pretty sure I'm set. People are kind, so I have enough tea to last me about a decade. I got both a Covid booster and the flu shot, all of my medications are in the kitchen, and my closet is stocked with scarves and hats. I had my first acupuncture session last Thursday, which was lovely, and a fantastically relaxing massage on Saturday thanks to my awesome sisters. Now I just want it to start so I can stop worrying about what might be and get on with the business of dealing with what is. So...... BRING IT ON!!!!

You've got this, ladies. We will survive it together and live long, healthy, beautiful lives.

Jeez, unnecessary trauma doing that to you. Don't worry too much about the port placement. I'm allergic to lidocaine of all things, so the Dr. scared me a bit by telling me that the alternative numbing medication might not work that well. As it turns out, I didn't feel any pain at all. Just some tugging and the sedation made me feel very relaxed, so it was more boring than anything else. It took him about an hour to put it in. The most annoying part of the whole thing was just that the entire process was exactly like the mastectomy because I had to go back to the surgical ward and do all the pre-op and post-op hoopla. A lot of drama for something that wasn't that big a deal at the end of the day.

I was sore for a couple of days and have a lovely, colorful bruise that adds to the whole Amazon warrior look I'm sporting these days. I did find that some Tylenol and Advil helped me sleep for the first three nights, but I didn't need anything during the day. Now a week out, it's just a little itchy. It is a rather large bump under my skin, and I was surprised that there are two small wounds. After a few days, I found the catheter (which feels like a large vein) running in between the two cuts they made.

Hoping all goes just as smoothly for you tomorrow!

Everythingispossible I am not triple negative, but I am having dose dense AC followed by Taxol because I'm node positive and still premenopausal. My first infusion was yesterday. The nurse talked up how painful it would be to access the port, but it didn't bother me much. She gave me some lidocaine cream, in case anyone who hasn't started it yet would like to try to get some ahead of time. After four children, needles just don't bother me very much.

I can't say the same for the symptoms afterwards. The one that surprised me the most was a temporary loss of vision. As I was walking out of the pharmacy a couple of hours after my infusion, I felt the nausea coming and then the world just went super blurry. I walked about half a block like that looking for my husband. As soon as he saw me, he ran to me and made me sit on the ground right on the sidewalk. A few minutes later, I could more or less see again, although using a computer wasn't happening. My husband and my oncologist both agree that it was likely a reaction to the Zyprexa they gave me for the nausea, so I'm not taking any more of that. Apparently, it can tank your blood pressure, which my husband says can cause an ocular migraine because there isn't enough blood reaching the optic nerve. That's a fairly rare side effect, though.

Despite all the pills and the acupuncture, I was still pretty nauseated last night. I made myself do my usual workout anyhow because sitting on the couch feeling miserable sucked. I finally threw up lunch and then felt better. Today, I've been doing much better. Just taking the Zofran for the nausea. It was pretty mild today. I didn't have much of an appetite and went pretty slow with food. Did get out for a long walk with my husband and was able to work from home, but I didn't feel well enough to go into the office and risk throwing up there. The nurses told me that the worst symptoms usually occur between 24 and 48 hours, so I'm hoping mine were just a little early and I may be over the worst of it for this cycle.

oldladyblue It is hard for people to process. Often, I feel the need to protect the people I love from it. My husband is definitely going through his own stuff as well. His father died of kidney cancer, so in many ways this has been emotionally harder for him than it is for me. My mother is also very anxious about the whole thing. She visits a lot now because she says she can only sleep when she's close to me. So I end up feeling like I need to be really strong for my loved ones because I don't want them to suffer. I guess I'm doing a good job because my children seem thoroughly oblivious to the fact that anything is happening at all. I get an occasional "how are you feeling, mom?" before they jump right back in to discussing school and their various friends and activities. I'm actually pretty happy about that because they are the only people who I get to be normal with. I still have to harass them about their homework and coordinate their activities. Makes me feel human instead of being just a cancer patient.