MIDDLE-AGED WOMEN 40-60ish

Loral

Native.........I think your right

MinusTwo

Whew - we're finally to page 985. So, who had coffee for breakfast?

Redheaded1

I didn't wake up till 10:45---rainy and dark, plus I over medicated to sleep.....Had Oatmeal and hot chocolate at 11:30....never in my life have I at breakfast at this hour.......

Jeeper4

minus2-I had coffee and a smoothie!

kkuziel

Hi, will add a post to the mix. Don't post often, but enjoy reading all of your comments. I'm nearly to the age when I don't fit the perimeters of this group, but figure I'm young at heart. Someone had mentioned hot flashes. Had them the first year constantly, but now just a couple times a week. Stiff when I sit too long but bought a Fitbit at Christmas and am determined to make my 10,000 steps 5-6 days a week. Seems to help. Best wishes to all.

macatacmv

Hey everyone and welcome new ladies! I've been MIA lately.

Lots going on. I also thought maybe I would feel better if I didn't think of BC all the time. But I found that I missed you guys.

I've been doing some traveling, dealing with a couple of health issues and helping some friends deal with a terrible brain cancer dx.

Also my aunt has been in and out of the hospital. Which falls on my plate when her sons aren't here. They live in FL, but they both have come up now. So I feel like I've got a bit of time to myself.

I have a new peeve here. The new dx and tx lines take up soooo much space! I guess on the bright side it will help us reach our goal of so many pages by the page's bday. Oh wait, no it won't because it's posts not pages. Don't take much to confuse me.

My DD said to someone the other day " I just turned my back for a moment to put the towel down and she fell into the hot tub." I am such a space shot my kids are watching out for me. So even tho I had a brace on my left wrist for a month it was not from slipping on ice this winter.

SweetThing

I'm 49, less than 2 months away from the big 50. Hi Cheesequake, I had relatives that lived in Chessequake NJ. Been reading the posts for a long time, thought I should jump in. Thank you ladies for all your insight and humor

elimar86861

Hello, all Newbies (and you don't get much Newbi-er than SweetThing--here on her first post!) So glad that those who have been stealthily reading along on this thread have popped in to introduce themselves. Don't worry, the whole age thing is somewhat arbitrary. I mean, if you are a BC-sister interested in the tangents we go off on then join in. I am sure we'll get to 30,000 posts soon enough, and I am quite happy that "weather talk" does not make up many of those posts. I'm not sure how many gratuitous beefcake pics we managed to get on here, but a threads got to have some vices, right? (Missing CMbear and her umbrella cocktail postings right now.)

mac, Yeah, I am not crazy about the extended Dx and Tx lines either. They seem to repeat themselves a little and take up a lot of space. I probably won't even update mine to the new style. On the other hand, I must have written a hundred times that I had lumpectomy surgery because that was not available before, and now you can just have that in one easy line. It does spell everything out now. The one practice that I found really annoying was when some chose to log every round of chemo in those tag lines, and that took up, like, half a page, or was 5 times longer than their actual posts. I think it would be sufficient to just list the start date and 4x or 6x or 8x, whatever.

Hot Flashes: I had awful ones on Tamoxifen. Then, the year after I went off Tamox., I still had them fairly strong--just the regular menopause ones, I guess. Now, this past year, I have not noticed very many. My Tamoxifen time was concurrent with my peri-menopausal time, so I'll never really know how much was from one and how much was from the other. I just hope i am done with all that!

MinusTwo

I chose to do a summary in the "signature" line. And I think I need to make even that less wordy. Maybe I'll send a note to the mods this week.

macatacmv

eli, I hope you're done with all that, too. I went thru menopause before dx, thot I was done with all that and now have hot flashes from the tami. I hate the trouble I have sleeping deeply. I am always tired. (and achy). I have started taking Low Dose Naltexone to relieve pain from the fibro and hopefully to get my brain unfoggy. I'll see how it works. I'm ready to try anything. I was over at my aunts yesterday and she had a jar filled with gin soaked raisins. She said it was for the pain in her shoulders. Now I am obsessed with wondering if it would work. Of course since I am an addict in recovery, it would NOT be a good choice for me. I would probably just drink the gin and forget the raisins.

macatacmv

minus2, your signature line is pretty good, but I get what you mean about wordy. I suppose I should work on mine. I've be getting reminders to update on the site. But being the rebel I am, I am resisting.

glennie19

I agree:  I think it is wordy too and have not updated mine either.

**waving** hello to everyone.   Welcome to the newbies. We are a fun bunch here!

Loral

Anyone notice that the print is very tiny on these discussion boards...Help mod's............

NativeMainer

There's a trick you can do with your computer screen--hold down the CONTROL key (Ctrl) and press the plus (+) key to increase the print size on the screen. You can do this more than once to keep increasing the print size. Control and the minus (-) key will make the screen print smaller.

Loral

THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!

justmaximom15

elimar, I have not had surgery yet - it's scheduled for one week from today. I picked between two great BS then saw a PS that I didn't care for at all so I went to my chosen BS and she recommended PS#2 so between all the appointment scheduling, her schedule, his schedule and my schedule this was the soonest we could do it. It seems like it's taken forever to get here but as the date draws closer the worse my nerves get. I feel like my whole life is never going to be the same again, which I guess is true. I'm just hoping for the best.

BTW, I'm having a lumpectomy with reduction. I don't have an exact date on radiation but the RO said about 4 weeks after surgery so that would put me around the first week of June. I have not scheduled with an MO yet but my BS expects that she'll put me on Tamoxifen for ... 10 years! ugh!

kkuziel

justmaximom, I had a similar surgery, lumpectomy - actually three such surgeries (one a fail, one the real deal, and the last for 1 mm of margin around DCIS) all in all (with the exception of failed surgery which was just a crushing disappointment as I wanted to wake up with everything done) it was pretty simple - I had no pain - took no pain meds, had an uneventful recovery all three times. I was petrified to have surgery - but found the word cancer far more scary than the word surgery so I was like a dog with a bone to get it done as quickly as possible - never thought I'd lead the charge to having surgery .You will be fine - although not everyone is the same in the pain department - I guess either I was numb to the pain - or simply didn't have any - I was back to work in four days (had it done on a Friday and returned to work on Tuesday) but you may experience more discomfort due to the reduction - but regardless it will be behind you and you can start on the next phase. Wishing you the best. Kris

macatacmv

surgery is surgery and every "body" reacts differently. I too had a lx and everyone (BS) said it would be a piece of cake, take a couple days off and you'll be right back at it. But that was not the case for me. Justmax, try to go into it without expectations and take what comes and go from there. I felt the same way before surgery, nervous, scared, It's the unknown that is hard to handle. My life is not the "same" but I have grown thru this process and I certainly don't take life for granted anymore. I think I enjoy my life more. No, I know what it is, I give myself permission to enjoy my life more.

kk, I am glad that you had minimum pain. It sounds like you are in good shape!

loral, are you sure you didn't just misplace your glasses?

Eph3_12

Well that font size enhancer is a lovely trick!

Loral

NO my glasses were on my face...but I fixed it.

glennie19

How is everyone this weekend?  Been quiet over here,,,

elimar86861

glennie19, I can't remember if I mentioned it here or not, but when I was doing chemo and for some months afterward, I did not notice my fibromyalgia flaring up or even bothering me really, like I was in FM remission if there is such a thing. After chemo, I did get neuropathy (CIPN) in my feet so they were feeling bad because of that, but I was not having FM in them...and the two do feel different. Weird.

Also, during chemo, I never got a cold or virus, even with a lowered white count. Guess chemo killed off any viruses.

My seasonal allergies were hardly noticeable (maybe that was from the steroid?)

MinusTwo

Yes, Eli - and I'll add that the chemo killed all the pre-cancerous skin damaged places that the dermatologist has always had to freeze or biopsy every 6 months. Unfortunately they're growing again now.

glennie19

Eli:  I must say,, that is so interesting about the chemo and the fibro,,, someone needs to do a study on that. Makes you wonder if it is from a strange virus that the chemo was killing off.

elimar86861

Well, it was about the only good thing about the chemo, and even since the chemo, I have only noticed FM in my hands 2-3 times. I don't know if my FM is like other peoples or not, but I used to get a disturbing vibration of nerves in both hands and feet when the FM was really active. To me, it was not a "tingle" but like the nerves were just humming in a bad kind of way. It never gets up to a full strength vibration anymore, but when my foot FM kicks in, I get "restless foot" that sometimes extends into "restless leg." Does that sound familiar to any of you FM people?

The one other kind of good thing about my chemo (besides keeping the FM at bay) is that I think it killed off my armpit hair. Or is that regular menopause that does it? I don't know. I've given up shaving my pits...I can just tweeze out 5-10 hairs once a month and I am good to go.

Other than the neuropathy, which continues to improve at a snail's pace, I feel like I have made a wonderful short term recovery from the onslaught of all my treatments; and without getting into too much fear-mongering I just hope I get some good years in before any long term effects start to show up.

-----------------------------

justmaximom, Good luck with your surgery tomorrow. I didn't have additional reduction with my Lx, but I have to say that the surgery was not too terrible. I was on the couch the following day with an "anesthesia hangover" but the pain was not bad. As for the bruising...I got more purple from that vicious "leather punch" biopsy I had than from the actual surgery. So, rest up tonight if you can and then tomorrow get that cancer gone!

glennie19

still hoping that menopause will kill the armpit hair,,, not yet,,,,7 months now,,, LOL,, I guess I have tough hair.

My Fibro isn't like that,, it is achy pain,, like you have the flu,, that never seems to go away.

 

In the bag for you, Justmaximom,,,, hoping you have a quick recovery.

 

Edit to say, love the new picture!

heartnsoul76

Hi ladies! I've been busy tearing my house apart from top to bottom to find everything I want to get rid of. I'm planning to open a little store and sell all this darn stuff.

My son came home over the weekend to help me. He went back to Seattle yesterday so we worked like dogs the last 4-5 days. I woke up in so much pain today. It was a gigantic fibromyalgia flare. When I do a lot of physical work with very little sleep I can count on my fibro flaring up. But it has to be that special combination of not enough rest/too much physical exertion. It does feel like achy pain all over, especially the long muscles in my arms and legs. After I was up for a few hours today and the pain was still extreme (plus, weirdly I couldn't stay awake) I went back to bed for about 3 hours and felt much better but still in a lot of pain. There's nothing you can take for it unless any of you ladies know something that makes it quit hurting. I just now tried a 325 mg aspirin, the wonder pill. All I know is that I can't wait to go back to bed.

I'm getting excited about opening the store. I think I have enough things around here to keep it open for about 9 months. At the same time I'm nervous. I've got to negotiate a good deal on the rent or I might find myself barely breaking even. I plan to open June 1st. I need to make some business cards because wherever I go I basically start conversations with whatever unlucky soul is next to me - haha. So I'm sure I'll hand them out a lot. Make flyers to hang on mailboxes. If any of the grocery stores around here had community bulletin boards I would use those but it looks like they've taken them all down. Make a few signs for street corners and put balloons on them. Hmm... I have a lot more to do than just worry about the stock. Now I'm tired.

Elimar - my armpit hair never came back on the radiated side so I always forget to shave the other side. There is no way I could tweeze armpit hair - OUCH!

I noticed that I never got sick while I was doing chemo. Someone speculated that maybe while chemo was killing our immune system only the strongest white blood cells remained so we had Super Immune Defense. In fact, I STILL haven't caught any bugs going around. Well, if there's any truth to the Super Immune Defense theory, that's a pretty good side effect to have.

Okay, see y'all later. Try to be good, but if you can't be good at least have a good time!

EDITED TO ADD: Well, the aspirin had no effect whatsoever. I figured it wouldn't but it had been so long since I tried it I thought why not.

heartnsoul76

Oh, I have a question for everybody. Would you price items like you do with a garage sale, expecting to negotiate? Or is it your experience that sellers in actual stores have it priced at what they'll sell it for?

NativeMainer

Heartnsoul--wow, that's a big project!Sorry about the fibro flare up.I can't imagine how much that hurts.Sorry the aspirin didn't work.I wish there was something that worked.My experience with small stores like you describe is that items are marked with a price, but sometimes negotiation happens too.Seems to be up to the individual store owner.

Tomboy

Great topper, El.