Has anyone started a forum for Chemo in Dec 2008?

Texas: You are so right! The reason that I could stand on my high horse is that I am feeling so much better. It does empower you. I swear it was just last week (I am 8 weeks out on Monday) that I truly felt that I had beat F N cancer. I felt my strength coming back and fear abating. I am of course still in Radiation. I have a year of herceptin infusions too. Herceptin girls do not get there hair back like you guys do. I am maybe not going to do any Hormone therapy as I have only 2% + ER. I do however have to loose 30 pounds. That will be a huge challenge for me. But the stakes are high. I will also drink my wonderful wine only on occasion. And on and on. The sacrifices do not out weigh the benefits. I know that you are not looking forward to hormone treatment but it is better to have something to treat. The girls that are trip neg are higher risk as a result of that. I will continue to hold you in my heart and prayers. WE CAN DO IT. Others have had our dx and never had a recurrence I want us to be like them so lets do all we can. Not getting depressed is important too. I think that  got me into this mess in the first place.

Hope everyone has a great weekend.

Lisa Love the sign, I should get one of those!

Grancy don't worry, takes lots to offend me! Went back to the hair salon and she fixed it. Still not crazy about the color, but everyone is agreeing that it's MUCH better (after they all said it looked fine in the first place

Bonnie I found myself doing lots of crying the 2 weeks before the end of rads. I didn't cry a lot since dx, but at the end, just the thoughts of finishing tx and being officially cancer would get me in tears. My last day of rads, I cried the entire day everytime I would tell someone, I'M DONE!!! It's normal.

Well, first week with no tx I haven't done anything of all week! I keep wanting to clean my house, but I'm so happy that I'm done with all dr appt that I really just want to rest so I decided I would just do that, nothing! Next week, I'll go back to normal life, this week, I'm enjoying. Amazingly I feel great, not thinking about reccurrence or anything. It's kind of scary, I'm feeling like I just woke from a bad dream, put it behind & moved on like it NEVER happened. How can I feel that way so quickly? Plus I don't want to forget, I need to remember what I've just gone through so that I can make the right choice to prevent going back down that road and to keep remembering that life is a precious thing and I need to take care of myself.

Both of my children will be in school next year I homeschooled this year, I know what was I thinking!!! Looking forward to having them in school next year. I plan on getting a part time job and spending the rest of my free time cooking good food from scratch Life is good, summer is here, well almost, if it would only stop raining!

Caroline I'm so looking forward to freedom from doctor's visits! For me it's been 8 months of almost daily labs or doctor's offices. My boss and co-workers have been so understanding!

This month, in addition to finishing radiation, I'm having 2 dentist appointments (one for a cleaning) and a bone density scan. As far as the rest of my schedule, I'm guessing it will look like this:  

July: Med oncologist visit, plastic surgeon visit (to assess the damage of radiation on the TE) and visit with my BS to get the ball rolling on my prophylactic mastectomy.

August: Gyn. annual visit.  

September: Prophylactic mastectomy with weekly follow ups at the PS  plus a Med. Oncologist visit.

October: 0 visits

November: Lat dorsi exchange surgery on one side, straight implant exchange on the other. Medical oncologist visit.

December: Nipple surgery? and time for another dental cleaning.

January: Nipple tattoos. Medical oncologist visit.

I know what you guys mean about a week with no appts.  That would be this week for me.  Unless something comes up.  Next week I have annual physical with reg. doc and LE therapy.  Next week I have gyn annual exam and 3 month check up with onc.  The week after, I see PS regarding nipples altho I don't know when I'll actually get them done.  Probably not during the summer.  But then nothing scheduled till Sept. 25 which will be onc again if I go.  I do need to get to a dentist in July.  You all must really feel the freedom after going to rads every day.

Texas, you still have a long way to go yet.  Why aren't you doing the lat. dorsi and implant in Sept when you have your prophy done? 

Hi everybody.  Just wanted to check in and say hi.  I've been back at my job driving city bus for about 5 weeks now and I am EXHAUSTED.  Sheesh.  I really am impressed by all the ladies here who worked through their treatments.  My brain really seems to have moved on, but my body is lagging behind.  Although I know part of my problem is that I have gained enough weight to be heavier than I have ever been, so my body hurts and makes it hard to be motivated to go to the gym like I know I'm supposed to which then makes me feel depressed which then propels me towards the Mcdonalds........sigh.  It's a vicious cycle that I'm having a really hard time getting out of.  But I have hope that eventually something will click in my brain and I'll get myself on the right track.  I have my first follow-up on the 17th.  I don't even know exactly what kind of tests my onc will do, but he's been very thorough up to this point.

I hope you all have a great weekend!  Everybody looks great in their short hair pics.  I finally stopped wearing my scarf about a week ago, and now everybody wants to touch my hair!

Carie, I can't believe you are just 3 months out.  Your hair is magnificent!! It will all click for you.  And the gym will start to look better than McD.  It just takes time.

Texas, I guess your timeline makes sense considering what and how she wants to do.  Just seems like so much yet. 

Busqueen - It's great to hear from you!  Your hair looks fantastic!  I wish I had that much color!

Simvog - I hope you were able to relax not having any doctors apts. last week.  Feels great!

I had a wonderful weekend with my parents and niece in from Arizona.  We went to the beach on Saturday. Walked around, ate some seafood and viewed some of the destruction remaining from the last hurricane (Ike) last September.  It is amazing that so many people are still rebuilding.  Yesterday we spent the day at NASA.  I'm back to work and my family is still sleeping.  Not fair!   It was a wonderful weekend!  I hope everyone had a great weekend!

Hey ladies,

For those of you who have had your nipples done, or have talked with your PS about it, what is the procedure? Do they take tissue from other parts of the body? If so, I may re-think my decision to go forward with them.

I've been MIA for a few days. Last week was my first week of no tx, so I did NOTHING! LOL. Trying to get some well overdue cleaning this week. I'm amazed at how my brain just moved on without adding fear into the mix! I feel like it's never happened, it was in the past and I'm back to normal. This is so odd and was not expecting to be feeling that way so quickly. Not going to complain though

As far as financial goes, ladies, check with your hospitals! I just found out that my hospital had a charitable organization (wish I would have know before paying some bills, but I guess they don't advertise it too well unless you say something). Well, we applied and qualified for 100% adjustment on ALL our hospital bills for the next 12 MONTHS! Also, they told us that if we show the approval letter to other providers, they might accept it. She said most do, but not everyone. So, I called the chemo & radiation offices and they both said, fax us the letter and we'll take care of it. I couldn't believe it. $1500 worth of bills erased in the matter of 5 minutes worth of phone calls. I also found out that no copay for any of those places for 12 months, so all my 3 months follow-ups are FREE Usually $25 copay. Like I said, wish I would have know before we put over the first $1500 this year So check with your hospitals, they might have a similar program. I would have never known if I hadn't asked about the possibility of a $25 copay for each of my 33 radiations! Phew.

Finally found a color I like Clairol Natural Instinct BRASS FREE. It has NO red what so ever in it. I was so scared before I used it, but phew I used the lightest brown and it's no so hard. I even chanced it on my eyebrows, I put it on for the last 2-3 minutes, kind of scary since I had never done that before so didn't leave it on too long, but it darkened then just a tad, enough to make it look better. Happy Happy

Swest That's what my MIL was telling me that the salt & pepper was making me look old. At least you were smart enough to do semi-permanent, so it won't last and next time you can pick a different color. I did hear that semi-permanent don't grab as much on the hair.

So, I'm really frustrated trying to find a job.  Even tho I have a BS, I seem to not be qualified, certified, licensed or what ever for any thing.  Seems kind of impossible but it's true.  Many years ago, back when laser surgery was brand new and only a few teaching hospitals were doing it (35 years ago), I was a surgical tech.  After working for only one year in the OR, I married and moved to Germany where I lived for 5 years.  Long story made very short, this past year with all the surgeries and procedures I realized that I want to go back to it.  A two year associate degree program costs $38,000.00. 35 years ago a 9 month certificate program for scrub tech was $2000.00.  Wow. But this two year program gets you to a second assistant level instead of just a scrub tech.  Thus a nicer paycheck. I'm not real sure how to do this as I've been the primary wage earner for the past 15 years.  I'm 53 years old.  I've survived cancer and I no longer care to just work to pay the bills.  Now I want to do what I want.  I have to find a way.  Does anyone know of any Obama stimulus money for retraining?  Or any other monies besides the traditional student grants and loans?  I've done searches on line and can't really find anything.  But I need to be able to find money to pay for school and pay the bills.  I almost feel like I'm too old for this, but it's the first thing that's given me a spark of excitement for a long time.

thanks for the support Caroline.  I was the "old" student when I got my BS.  At least that's what I thought then.  I was 27.  Lots of things to consider and work out to do this including health insurance.  I really can't go without that!

Good news on my insurance front;  they finally paid for the oncotype test.  What is weird is that instead of paying Genome, the sent me a check for an amount $857 over what the onctype test costs.  The EOB says the over payment is statutory interest for delayed payment. I guess I'll wait for the bill from Genome now so I can pay them.  It's really odd tho.  Oh, my ins. still hasn't paid for my exchange surgery.

You're welcome. Hopefully they'll end up overpaying you for the exchange as well

Sonia, I thought about starting a thread to get money info and then I didn't know if it would be appropriate.  I guess if it's not, someone will let me know.  

I went out to the college today to chat with a counselor and take a tour of the campus.  Oh my.  What a great place.  They only take 12 students at a time into the program.  They even have 2 "ORs" where the students do mock surgeries on dummies.  It was awesome.  I met several of the instructors and when one of them found out I had a BS, she said I could teach some of the classes there when I finish the program as well as work somewhere as a tech.  I'm so jazzed about this.  I love teaching too.  That was my second "career".  I did find out that because I already have a degree, I won't qualify for any federal or state grant money.  Doesn't that suck?   But I do have the websites of a few private grant possibilities.  The next class starts July 13 but I don't know if I'll make that one.  The one after starts in October.  I'll most likely shoot for that. Thanks for sharing my enthusiasm and allowing me to go on and on.  I feel like we've all be thru so much together, I couldn't not tell my Diva sisters.  

Morning all. I"m through with the boosts and go back for 8 last radiation treatments.

I had surgery yesterday to install the tubes in my tear ducts. Came back looking like a prize fighter. The worst part is my nose is very bloody and I'm not allowed to blow it so I'm coughing up blood.

Just something else that makes me feel so feminine, you know? Hopefully will be back to normal in a couple of days.