February 2011 chemo pals

Jen thanks for the encouragement! I am sooooo ready for the end of chemo !!!!



Emily - thanks to you too! Makes me feel better about rads!

Dogeyed - I had neuropathy with Taxotere.  My onc gave me Neurontin and that fixed me right up.  I took it after each treatment for about 7-10 days.  The neuropathy in my fingers and feet have gone away.  Maybe it would work for you?

Dogeyed- I can't remember if I asked you - any nail problems with taxol? My two big toe nails are painful, oozing a little and lifting off the bed. Ring fingernails look like they might do the same. Erg! One more. One more. One more!

So glad to hear from you, RUFFOLO!  Surgery tomorrow, huh?  Well, glad they're gonna get it outta there.  That's next for me, hopefully before July is out.  Give us a shout when you can move again!

Oh, gosh, MAMAV, I'm so sorry about your nails.  My big toenails have been blackened for a long while, but they're still sticking to me.  Fingers are okay.  I kept them cut real short cuz someone said that would help, but I can tell that both toe and fingernails are sticking up in odd positions, some of them.  One more!

MICHELLE, bless you having to go thru chemo again, I hope you don't have many left.  Yesterday I was hurting pretty bad, and this morning was rough too, mostly my arms from neuropathy burning. 

Thanks for the hello and update, LISA, sometimes my side-FX will come Saturday full-force, other times Sunday, but it's how long they last that is a mystery for me.  July 4th, I cannot believe it.  Who'd have thunk all of us would go from waaaay back in February, still winter, and make it all the way to now, summer.  Love to all, GG  P.S.  Oh, how I wish I knew where our Fuzzy was. 

Thank you jen and everyone else with encouragement for the last one! I never thought I'd make it and cant believe it's really in 4 days! I will continue to pray for the last few bringing up the rear. This has been such a long 6 months of chemo! Still so much ahead of me, but at least this poisoning is coming to an end!

Yeah to those finishing up chemo- it's a great feeling!

Michelle, I ditto what Special K said.  Your mood will improve once this entire second chemo is over.  Just yesterday I got alll pissy about one of our dogs having diarrhea and took it out on my husband.  I feel like a bum today.  He understands, but still...  But just one more tomorrow (hooray MamaV!), and lucky for me, today is the first day of the week that I haven't felt ovewhelming pain when I got up. 

I have heard of post traumatic stress getting to some cancer ladies, and instead of me holding onto it until some awkward time, I have ongoing swamp fever:  complaining, moaning, and groaning, screaming.  I'm very fussy these days.  I will have to resume some walking exercise, to rest my body and mind from all this tension.  As soon as Taxol wears off next go, I'll pick it back up.  Bye for now, Gail

So happy you're almost done, dogeyed and mamav!!! Do they have a bell to ring in your hospital for last chemo? They do at my hospital and it's the happiest sound you can imagine so ring that bell - even if it's just in your head!

Divine,

Yes, on the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder thing, here is our website's link to the forum on that:

http://community.breastcancer.org/forum/102

There is also some info in the general treatment/symptoms sections of the website, the menu across the very top of the page, altho I have not looked thru that stuff.  But here is one link to it:

http://www.breastcancer.org/treatment/side_effects/stress_disorder.jsp 

 Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD, as you probably already know, is a term used for soldiers who come home from battle and they're a nervous wreck, their tension affects their behavior, relationships, independence, and so on.  Since their particular brand of PTSD is from explosions and firefights, when they come home they are still hypervigilant, always looking for the next enemy on the street to fire off a rocket or something.  I wrote an article about it when I used to work on newspapers, talked to the head Psych doc at our VA hospital, and he explained it all to me.  It has been one of the subjects of a few movies, where our men just lose it outta nowhere.  In "Coming Home," Bruce Dern sort of panics after he comes home, he cannot relax and gets rather paranoid about people close to him, he's particularly good at looking pretty wild in the face.

I would think tranquilizers are what calm a person waaay down, as you probably already know if you took any during your treatment, altho I cannot argue about Zoloft, it has properties in it that prevent a person from worrying about stuff too long.  One thing that helps PTSD is talking about the stress, could be a local psychologist could help you with a few visits.  I've had a couple nervous breakdowns in my day, and exercise helps relieve stress better than almost anything, to where you break a sweat three or four times a week.  Swimming is good, jogging or long walks, just whatever you like to do.  Deep breathing helps in a pinch, it slows the heart down, so whenever you feel your nerves firing up, take a real deep breath, blow it out, breathe normal a few times, then repeat up to ten times.  It lowers the heartrate and thus the stress.

When you think about it, we have been like soldiers in battle, getting shot at, wounded, constantly invaded, endless tornados of pain and emotion, and when we're finally on leave, we keep thinking the other shoe is going to drop.  But Divine, there is also a chance that your heart IS having a minor rhythm problem, perhaps, since some chemotherapies can affect the heart in a negative way.  Perhaps you can get the cardio doc to further explore the situation, just to rule out any problems.  I had two "Muga" scans for my heart, I felt my heart hurting numerous times during chemo and they wanted to make sure I was okay.  There's also some kind of dopplar machine, cardiologists have them, where they can watch in real time how well the blood is being pumped thru the heart.  If it's injured in some small way, they can give medicines to keep you straight.

I remember in my first rounds of the hardest chemo, another woman here and myself both got to where we were nervous wrecks when we came on chemo day, and I always took a little stuffed bear for security, and I was clinging so tightly to it, hands were shaking, got sweat all ove my bear, just because I knew how bad the side effects were going to be, even tho the chemo infusion itself wasn't a big deal.  And yesterday, after several weeks of declining stamina from Taxol's cumulative effects to where they changed the timing of my chemo from one hour to two, it helped me enough that I didn't feel too badly yesterday... so what did I do?  I slept almost the entire day, and easily went to bed and slept all night, too.  I was exhausted from stress.  PTSD can get like that, too, where a person is so wired, they cannot relax.  I had no idea I was so tired from nerves.

I didn't mean to write a book, and I don't think I really offered much help, Divine.  But I just wanted to pull out everything I could think of on the subject to help you along with looking into PTSD.  It is a real thing, we've got it as a subject in our forumsI hope you will check out that PTSD forum, maybe there's a few threads that have been started by the ones who are dealing with this type of anxiety from cancer/chemo, etc.  And I'm sure you can find info about PTSD not only hopefully at our website, but also perhaps online, to give you a baseline of knowledge to see if you fit that pattern.  We have to bury a lot of stuff while we're going thru treatment or else we wouldn't be able to stand up to it.  No wonder you feel a little off, your nerves are fried, you've had it, girl.  If it's any help, I've pretty much had it, too, but only time will tell if stress sticks to me once treatment is over.  Love, Gail

CONGRATS MAMAV!!

DO you have to do rads?

MamaV Congrats on finishing chemo!!! I know everyone is different but if it makes you feel better, I've had 11 of 33 Rads so far with absolutely no problem-I'm still fatigued from chemo but Rads has been a breeze compared to the chemo nightmare...

dragonfly - thanks!  Good to hear!  Hope it continues to go well and I follow in your path!

Oh - I forgot to share - received results BRCA NEGATIVE!

Congrats to MamaV for finishing chemo!!!  Dogeyed, aren't you done too?  I was thinking about you girls today.  Hopefully you felt the relief that I felt three weeks ago today.  I realized this morning that it would have been a treatment day on my normal chemo cycle.  What a thrill for it to be just a regular day!