Hey everyone, hope you’re all doing well!

Thank you for all the check-ins and “Hey, how’s it going” texts and emails. I really appreciate it.

Speaking of check-in, if your’e on Facebook you probably saw I checked into Casa Del Sloan last Friday.  A lot of you had questions because you thought I was done with treatment after my last anti-body infusion in March.

Like done, done.

But, unfortunately when you’ve been diagnosed with breast cancer, I don’t think you’re ever really done download youku. There’s usually a lot of follow-up appointments and almost everyone is on some form of pill for 5-10 years to help prevent a recurrence.  As most of you know, my breast cancer was what they call “triple positive” (estrogen, progesterone and HER2) and just to focus on the estrogen part of the equation, the cancer cells were feeding off of it and that was stimulating their growth.

So the available treatments post chemo for an estrogen positive patient is to take a daily estrogen blocker pill, or yank out your ovaries. No one wants to do that unless it’s absolutely necessary, so the only option left is to take a daily blocker.

There’s two kinds of estrogen blockers that are used. Tamoxifen is one of them and it’s given to women who are premenopausal. That would be moi capella. The other is called an aromatase inhibitor and is for older, postmenopausal women.

The aromatase inhibitor has a slightly higher success rate of preventing a recurrence, so sometimes oncologists will put their premenopausal patients on that.  But in order to do that, the patient has to get a shot every month to suppress their ovaries and stop them from producing estrogen, which pushes them into menopause. Otherwise the aromatase inhibitor won’t work.

There’s all kinds of facts and studies behind the two meds, so for you medical/science nerds, here’s your chance to geek out google chrom herunterladen deutsch. This is the difference between the two, per Dr. Google:

“Aromatase inhibitors limit the amount of estrogen the body produces in postmenopausal women.  AI’s work by preventing the conversion of steroids made by the adrenal gland into estrogen.
In a woman who has gone through menopause, the adrenal gland is the largest source of estrogen. AI’s don’t work in women who are premenopausal because their ovaries make most of their estrogen.
Aromatase inhibitors work by blocking the enzyme aromatase, which turns the hormone androgen into estrogen in the body elster 2016 kostenlos. This means that if you use an AI, less estrogen is available to stimulate the growth of hormone-receptor-positive breast cancer cells.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz, I know.

Here’s Tamoxifen:

Tamoxifen belongs to a class of drugs called selective estrogen receptor modulators (SERMs), which work by blocking estrogen from binding to its receptors in the breast. Tamoxifen is an “anti-estrogen” and works by competing with estrogen to bind to estrogen receptors in breast cancer cells. By blocking estrogen in the breast, Tamoxifen helps slow the growth and reproduction of breast cancer cells.”

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Anyway, when we first started talking about which estrogen blocker I would be on, my oncologist gave me the pros and cons of Tamoxifen vs the aromatase inhibitor download youtube videos on handy iphone.  There are side effects with both and if you look them up, you’d almost rather take your chances and not take either of them. Tamoxifen was supposedly relatively easy on people and there would be no need for me to get an additional monthly shot to suppress my ovaries. With the aromatase inhibitor the menopausal symptoms they cause from shutting off your ovaries can be bad.

So because I had just gotten over chemo and radiation, had been hospitalized with an infection and had a bout of shingles both in the middle of chemo, my doctor felt like I had “been through enough” and didn’t want to push me into menopause and have me deal with those additional symptoms. So we went with Tamoxifen so I could get back to what she referred to as  “some kind of a normal life.”

Well if you’ve followed along, I introduced you to my newborn baby, “Tamoxifen Cote” shortly after I started it ashampoo kostenlos downloaden chip.  The side effects kept me up all night, almost every night. Massive hot flashes and night sweats and horrible muscle cramping. I was waking up drenched and jolting out of bed and walking off charley horses in my living room at all hours of the night. Sometimes at work I would just be sitting there and my hamstring would seize up and I’d have to randomly stand up and stretch or walk it off.

I started acupuncture to help with the hot flashes and night sweats. Sloan did a study on it (shocker) and found acupuncture works to prevent hot flashes. So now I go once a week for that. It doesn’t take them away entirely, but it definitely does help download wikipedia page.

For the muscle cramping, I started drinking tonic water and apple cider vinegar and eating bananas and everything else with potassium to stop the cramping. I was taking magnesium supplements and drinking more water. I tried getting massages but I wound up jumping off the table from cramping.  I took hot baths to relax my muscles, then slipped and fell and cracked a rib in two places. And not to digress, but whose bright idea was it to put the hardest materials in the wettest, soapiest, most slippery room of the house?

Anyway,  after almost ten months of this, by the time I got to my next follow-up appointment with my oncologist I had had it download all images from a website.  We went through the options again which were to remove my ovaries or switch to an aromatase inhibitor with the ovary suppressor shot. There really wasn’t a great need to remove my ovaries, they usually do that for women who test positive for the breast cancer gene and women who are at high risk for developing breast cancer that could turn into ovarian cancer. And even if I did remove them, I’d still need to take a daily aromatase inhibitor to block the estrogen coming from other parts of my body like my adrenal gland. So we went over the process to get me on the aromatase inhibitor and decided on that.

What it would entail is taking the daily pill, going to Sloan every month for a shot to suppress my ovaries and then an additional shot every six months that helps slow bone loss and increase bone strength arcor mail.  Unfortunately,  one of the side effects of the aromatase inhibitor is that it can cause osteoporosis and brittle bones which can lead to bone fractures down the line.  It’s a small price to pay for potentially saving your life I guess.

As soon as we decided on what route to take, I started right away on the aromatase inhibitor and the nurse came in to give me my first two shots. The bone health shot was in my right arm.

And now here’s the fun part my oncologist, I’m almost positive, intentionally left out of the equation. The ovarian suppressing shot is given in the gluteus maximus. Yes, it’s a shot in the ass. Every month. It didn’t hurt when I got them, but I will tell you the one in the behind is sore as hell for a few days later.  It feels like a cross between getting kicked in the butt cheek repeatedly for 17 hours straight, or maybe doing squats and lunges for 2 days and trying to walk like a normal person.

But even after being off Tamoxifen for a couple of months I can already notice a difference. I still have a little muscle cramping and the hot flashes are still there because of the ovary suppression and the daily pill, but thankfully it’s a lot better than it was before.

So that’s the long answer as to why I’m back checking into Sloan on some Fridays again.

Fingers crossed this is the right move and it does the trick to prevent a recurrence because I never want to go down that road of treatment again.

No one knows for sure if it will, but I’d say it’s definitely….worth a shot.