Starting Chemo in June 2005

Hi to all Junies - I have just discovered this site - really didn't have the urge to spend much time on the internet initially because i found it just stressed me out. wow, wish i would have found this site earlier -i have been feeling pretty alone. i was diagnosed in april, surgery in may -started chemo 6/2, 4 AC - no node involvement - had a masectomy -lobular. last treatment is scheduled for 8/11 -my 26th wedding anniversary -we have been joking about it. it may take me awhile to get the hang of this discussion board -my brain has really been hit by the chemo.
Take care to you all - what wonderful, open sharing!

Good morning Junesterettes,
Some are grads I see!!! Woo hoo!
Some are stuck in the mud under the sea- golly days- clinical trials- they may come up with the conclusion at the end of the trial that " After 2 years we have discovered a course of only 3 treatments are necessary" I will provide the rocks to throw at your researchers!

Hand and Foot girls- YOU KNOW you CAN SWITCH- If you are on Taxol and have bad symptoms then you CAN try Taxotere...
who would have though a yew tree could be like that?
And for your amusement- two weeks ago I dropped a wall fan on my foot- this weekend I dropped a big vase with water in on the same foot-
Now I am missing 2 toenails- happy?
Remember if you have individual mouth sores dab on some Milk of Magnesia- they go away!
Someone is starting Epi? Epi is the one that people take instead of Adriamyacin if they have heart trouble. It works the exact same way but no heart effects- so don't be afraid of that.
Liz pass the brownies.
I have been super busy at wok and haven't been here in a while and I apologize. I haven't had my coffee yet so I can't give a pep talk right this moment but...

ILL BE BACK

Hey all you new people - you will never be alone as long as you are on this board! Post as often as you need to and ask any questions you want, even if you think they are silly!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ZEAMER3!!

Brenda I have been blue too. My family is desperate to see me smile.
I just seem to have lost my way a bit.
Today I have developed a rash all over my body.
The aches are still here but not too bad. I was able to do quite a bit today.
I too wonder and play the "what if" game. I should have acted sooner. Although everyone assures me the outcome would have been the same in terms of treatment.
I wonder if I will ever believe that.
Hopefully the rest of this day won't hold any suprises.

Ouch! Sorry about your foot! Not once, but twice....double ouch!

Brenda, sorry you are feeling so blue. It's hard when we are feeling bitter about what happened to us...how can the world go on when we are sitting at home having to deal with this??? I hope you feel better soon. ((HUGS)).

....didn't get much work done today at work. I'm trying to catch up and get to know all of you! Wish I'd have found you sooner. Then I wouldn't have chemo brain and have to try to figure it all out! LizFl I think we are on the same schedule. Just a question for all of you who are done with the A/C. Is #4 any easier than #3? I sure do hope so. It really knocked me on my tail. Yesterday was the first day I really felt pretty good(in a I have BC and been through hell so far kind of way). My symptoms seem to be similiar to alot of you. Runny nose, watery eyes, sleepless nights, the worst nausea ever, blah, blah, blah!
I also wanted to share a website where I got the cutest T-shirt. It's bright pink and says "CANCER SUCKS" in big white letters. You can pick any color shirt you want. They also have ballcaps. I wore my shirt to my last doctor visit. They all thought it was a hoot! Oh, and an added bonus that I found out when they shut the light out to check my eyes--the white letters glow in the dark! My doctor and I laughed so hard the girls at the desk were asking what was so funny! A little comic relief helps!
~Mindy~

It is all relative. You said some tiredness and ickiness from a/c---well that is the side effect of a/c and if you felt it was easy---then so will taxol be for you...expect some slight bone pain instead of nausea and same amount of fatigue. I experienced a/c as you did (I work full time)
and have done two rounds of taxol....good luck!

I was just checking for an update an realized I didn't give you the website for the t-shirt. Gee, I wonder why I can't get my brain to work right. The site is choosehope.com. Actually, there is all kinds of sites that sell the merchandise, I just typed in "cancer sucks" into my search engine and all sorts of sites popped up. The reason I did this was because when I went to the Look Good Feel Better in my area there was a women there who had a hat on that said it. I couldn't find her particular hat, so I got a shirt instead. Ramble, ramble, ramble, I'll shut up now.
Good luck for #4 Jen. I glad to see that it is easy on you. I'll hope the same for you with your Taxotere. I'll take Taxol after Thursday's dose of A/C. Hopefully doc will allow me to take the Vicodin I have left over from my mastectomy. We'll see. Take care.

~Mindy~

My Ac number 3 was harder to recover from than number four. For what ever that is worth.
I am starting to have hot flashes . One after another. Is anyone else having this since starting Taxol?
On a positive note I could eat some fresh food for the first time in over a month today. That was nice.
I seem to have developed a bit of a rash on my torso.
I called the Dr. just to report in since so many things seem to be happening at once. Despite this I really am O.K.
Adjusting to all these shifts and changes is a challenge.
Dana ....You are right. I will not play the what if game,
No surrender ...I am really sorry to hear about your "vase incident".

CATHI-
Did you see this study that was printed on the Moving Beyond board?

I will cut and paste it for you:

Women should keep their ovaries, says study
Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Most women getting a hysterectomy should keep their ovaries because the common extra step of removing them seems to do no good and might decrease their long-term survival, researchers report.

The provocative study, being published Monday in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology, does not settle the issue. It does not track actual patients, but uses other data to create a model of the surgery's effects.

Still, the work promises to raise questions from women and their doctors about a procedure long accepted despite little evidence to back it.

Some 615,000 hysterectomies — the surgical removal of all or part of the uterus — are performed every year. Ninety percent of them are for noncancerous reasons. More than half of those women also get their ovaries removed not because the ovaries are diseased but as a protective measure against developing ovarian cancer in the future.

Ovary removal, or oophorectomy, has been deemed protective for women at high risk of ovarian cancer because they harbor cancer-causing genes or have a family history of the disease.

There is no evidence about whether ovary removal benefits other women, who make up a majority of these surgeries, said Dr. William H. Parker of the University of California, Los Angeles.

Yet most gynecologists consider a protective oophorectomy standard for any women having her uterus removed after age 45, he said.

The thinking is that with childbearing over, menopause imminent, and ovarian cancer particularly deadly because there is no way to screen for it, it is best to catch it early. If the ovaries are removed, so is that concern.

But even after menopause, the ovaries do continue to produce a small amount of hormones, including testosterone that the body later converts into estrogen.

Parker wondered if the abrupt loss of all those hormones through ovary removal would outweigh most women's low risk of ovarian cancer.

He used data from other studies about women's mortality risks in general and some that tracked heart attacks and bone-thinning osteoporosis in oophorectomy patients. Parker created a model of how women with different characteristics would fare with ovary removal at different ages.

Ovary removal did not show a clear benefit for women of any age, Parker said. For women whose ovaries were removed

before 65, the models suggest that oophorectomy actually increases the risk of dying from heart

Nosurrender, thanks for that article! I am meeting with the gyno onco this morning to talk about my options. In reading the report from my genetic test results, it shows that my risk of ovarian cancer is 44%, to me that is a big percentage, but am still not sure I want to have my whole womanhood removed! Guess I will find everything out that I need to find out today! Thanks for thinking of me when you saw that article! Today is not any better as far as pain from the Taxol! My low back is really bugging me, although it doesn't help that I cleaned my floors yesterday as we had someone coming to look at our house to buy it and so I needed to clean it! I am truly paying for it today and just wish that I could crawl under a rock and not come out until September when my chemo is all over with. I am such a BABY!!!!!

Cathi

Jo, I too find it bot h blessing and curse to be home. Sometimes I think I would rather be doing this in winter, but then I think, with winter so long and dark, it would be super depressing (it already is, in winter). It feels like being cheated out of summer. I do try to get out and about a lot, and go to Jazzercise on the "off" week, and I'm doing a lot of art shows on weekends. But sometimes I envy those who must get themselves up and out everyday, because I just don't have the intrinsic motivation I'd like to.

Bancroft, thanks for the encouragement about Taxol. I'm starting to feel a lot of trepidation, like Jen, I've felt my suffering was less than it might have been with AC, so maybe Taxol will hit me hard to make up for it. I'll be glad to get past #1, just to have an idea of what to expect.

Brenda

I am back from #3 and thank God they changed my antinausea meds. I feel so much better just very, very tired this time. I am now taking Reglan, Decadren and Benedryl - makes you tired but no nausea thank God!

I took a chance and ate a salad at home - washed the lettuce 3 times and peeled the tomatoes. No problems.

JoMac- I had a rash also a couple of weeks ago. I had changed laundry detergents and it finally clicked that that was the answer. Have you used anything different?