Mar 15, 2013 02:07PM 1ougirl wrote:

I asked my doctor what the difference was between taxol and taxatere because she chose to give me taxatere and she said that in general, taxatere has less sides effects than the taxol but they have the same active agent in them.  I guess she gave me taxatere because when she gave me the AC chemo first, I had an allergic reaction to it that was pretty severe.  I was coughing, sneezing, fevers, and felt like I had the flu (and that was just with the first dose). My heart felt funny too.  So what does my doctor do?  She says "Tough it out.  You need this chemo and we are gonna give it to you until we feel that it is doing more detrimental harm than good. With that Onco score, you NEED chemo."  Just about the time I was gonna say "no more", there was no more and I started the taxatere.  Taxatere took all my finger nails and toe nails off but I didn't care, at least I felt better.  Nails can always grow back.  It was so funny when I finally was finished with my treatments.  I took a good look in the mirror and wanted to scream.  Instead I listened to my husband and he said "Hon, you look gorgeous.  You have a great head for baldness".  Years later the poor guy said "Man, that bald look was weird".  We laugh now because it wasn't long before I had the cutest dark hair poking out of my scalp.  My husband said with a wink and a nod "And all these years (32) I thought you were a blond....."  I said "I am a blond.  As soon as this hair gets a little longer, my hairdresser will show you how blond I really am".  teehee

Mar 16, 2013 08:13AM nancyhb wrote:

Kam - I'm just coming up to my first year PFC in May, and both excited and nervous.  I know the first couple of years are the most likely time for recurrence so every day that goes by without anything obvious helps me feel a little better.  I think.    I'm weaning myself off my Effexor right now because I realized it totally flattened my affect and I just didn't care about anything.  As scary as this all is - I really do want to feel *something*.

I hadn't thought about EMDR - good idea!  My DH is actually trained in EMDR.  We've talked extensively about the resulting PTSD after cancer diagnosis/treatment and how difficult it is to get "past" it (can't really get "over" it) without some support.  I tried my local support group but for a variety of reasons it wasn't a good fit for me.  We just keep plugging along, don't we?

Mar 18, 2013 05:56PM nancyhb wrote:

Kam:  You're right, our stats are similar; my recurrence rate with chemo and Tami are 18%.  My MO confirms that my cancer is Luminal B subtype, so he seems to expect that I'll fall closer to that 18% than the 82% that do NOT have a recurrence.  Isn't it strange how we can fixate on the (smaller) stat that's negative, rather than the (much larger!) stat that's positive?!

But I'm counting on both of us being long-term high-Oncotype score survivors!! 

Mar 18, 2013 06:12PM the_roadshow wrote:

Hi all, I'm counting on all of us being long term high oncotype DX score survivors!

Haven't written much lately. Started FEC chemo on Friday and it's been pretty hideous so far. Can't shake the nausea but have managed to sleep pretty good despite taking steroids. Just laying low and waiting for the worst of it to pass. The cold cap has left me with a bad headache these past 4 days but I think I'll persevere with it. I wore most of my ski gear in the hospital so wasn't that cold but everything inside my head felt so weird when the blood started to flow again. Hoping SEs improve so I can get back to some sort of normal for at least a week or so between sessions.

Mar 18, 2013 06:15PM the_roadshow wrote:

I didn't get my Ki67 score either although I understand it's calculated as part of the Oncotype DX test.