Sisterhood of the Secret Handshake

I'm trying to figure out a more appropriate face than a "smiley" face for a mask in the pic- anyone, ideas?

Going back for missed posts...

Leah, my young friend from RADs is also Orthodox (a version of Modern Orthodox) I wonder if there's a way to get us all together somewhere kosher?  She's in Staten Island and only comes in for TX at this point.

carollyn- I feel for ya - and I really do.  The kid got sick last week and gave it to me and it SUCKED.  Even though it was just a runny nose and soreish throat and general YUCK feeling, nothing dramatic, it still knocked me down for a couple days.  

oh and ... period's over and and so, it seems are my HF.    I am more stiff than I recall being, but I can push through that

linda- i'm at a loss for words and can only send major hugs to you and your son.

OK I am caught up!!!! (I think) 

I was so stunned at the part about Helena not liking chocolate I missed the salt part.  Well yeah, i love salt, but if i have to give up one of them, salt will GO!  

So Helena QOTD- ya building an ark?  I can totally see that.  Your backyard looks like a good place to build an ark. Hey I KNOW the smiley face looks like crap- I just was blanking on the right image.  Help? I can put something else there but meanwhile- doncha love our handshake?  Oh and btw that day I had just come from my first follow up mammo and ONC appts day, and I was completely hammered on Xanax and giddy with joy from it all going well.  And with my BC org pals to celebrate and them getting their growing in hair all pretty colored...   Oh I love it, we're corrupting you with thoughts of hot chocolate... yess... all part of my evil plan... muahahahaha... and I am sure glad to see you here (selfish of me).

Mary number 2 (we have a Mary) oh no, an English prof... I am a writer who knows nothing of grammar... I am in trouble!  Well no, actually, I will just pick your brain ... yeah!   Well I am afraid I'd chase off the nicer people on this thread if I swore like I actually wanted to... fuckity fuck fuck fuck  But as we were saying before, we kinda like to reserve the swear words for the stuff to do with cancer, 'cause if we don't then haven't got any words left to express the cancer stuff.   OK back to the Tamox... 44 and very premenopausal, no chemo, right?  So you had regular periods?  What day of your cycle did you start Tamox?  I have a theory- no studies or even empirical data to support it, but since I am highly suggestible I think it's working for me.  From what I have read here I think it's fair to say its unusual to have SEs within a week of taking Tamox (anyone?).  Oh and I finished RADs in May and didn't start Tamox until September, but that was my plan, along with my ONC.  During the interim I kept a list of "SE"s I was having- BEFORE Tamox.  Really helps me now to sort out what might be Tamox and what might not.  Oh and here's the spiel about Tamox SEs (everyone else can skip this)

Tamox was not designed to fight breast cancer, it was a bone drug that oops, accidentally happened to reduce breast cancer.  When they did the big clinical trial of 13K women, half on Tamox and half on placebo, some startling things happened, but for our purposes now 2 big ones:

1- The women on Tamoxifen were doing so much better against recurrence they had to call the study off early, because it wasn't fair to the women who were on placebo

2- Yes, the women on Tamoxifen reported an increase in SEs... but here's the fun part... SO DID THE WOMEN ON PLACEBO. Except for the hot flashes, those are definitely reported more often on Tamoxifen AND more hot flashes are correlated to even lower recurrence rates.

Here's the study:

http://www.cancer.gov/clinicaltrials/digestpage/BCPT

and here's another study, with only a couple hundred women, but interesting results- same as the big study in terms of SEs:

www.buchholzmedgroup.com/articles/PDF/Tamoxifen.pdf

Oh and while I am at it, check out this awesome video from Sloan Kettering about Breast Cancer

http://www.mskcc.org/mskcc/html/92358.cfm

and this wonderful link to help figure out which sites are ca ca

http://www.cdc.gov/DES/consumers/research/understanding_deciding.html 

OMG Nancy you completely crack me up!!!!! You're going to cause a revolution at the hospital!  

KEW- and I thought no one could top that ... yeah you are right!!! Oh and you are giving your son everything he needs to have a long healthy life.  

One more thing since I am repeating a lot of my golden oldies... I once here figured out how our Stages compared to celebrities...  If you are Stage II and did chemo, you have the Melissa Etheridge Stage... oh and on that note, here's some required reading for this thread...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_j3TDhc8vY 

NO KLEENEX REQUIRED!!!! 

i'm up, its not so late- like midnight

OK, Googled John Mayer and he's a decent musician.  But how does he compare to this:

Eh, John Mayer is cute.  But if you were wearing just a towel and were standing in the hall between a bedroom with hugh jackman waiting in one and john mayer waiting in the other, which room are you going to?

what accent has john mayer got?  american?

nyah nyah nyah mine's bigger than yours :P

well we're tied on accents, or maybe I am ahead because Hugh is an Aussie like you, so that's an accent for me, plus when he plays in XMen he speaks like a good ol' American.