11 September 2012

Nuts and Bolts Update

It occurs to me that some people who are not in my life day to day may not know what is really going on with me since I no longer blog frequently.

I am almost a year out from my double mastectomy. My reconstruction is essentially done. I am assuming that since my surgery, I have been cancer free. They removed everything; tumors, tissue around them, actually all breast tissue, on both sides. There's just no way I have any breast cancer left, unless some cells broke off prior to my surgery and have lodged somewhere else.

And so I opted for chemotherapy, which ended about nine months ago. In the event some errant cells were hiding, the Taxotere and Cytoxan would find and kill them. The mechanism there is that the drugs target and damage the mitochondria in cancer (and other fast growing) cells so those cells cannot reproduce.

In addition to that, I take hormone therapy in the form of Tamoxifen, which I will continue for five years. The cancer I had was estrogen positive, which means it was nourished by the estrogen in my system. The Tamoxifen binds to estrogen in my system and prevents it from binding to any other cells, cancerous or not which essentially starves them. And hence, I have drug induced menopause.

There is really no test that can be done for this cancer. No scan or lab test can detect if I have weird cancer cells floating around. In that sense, I cannot say I'm cancer free, although I think I am. Likewise, I cannot claim to be cured, as there is no cure for cancer. The term remission does not apply to me since I do not have a tumor that is measurable.

I am finding my life to be settling back down to where I was, with slight changes. My memory fails me more often, names and words escape me, I don't have the stamina I used to have and I get overwhelmed more often. I feel behind on many things this year, disorganized and disconnected.  Catching up takes all my focused energy which means other things fall by the wayside while I'm working on one area at a time.  At least I am able to focus and plough through stuff.

I still do not feel 100% healthy.  I am still having some issues from my surgeries, notably muscle tightness, weakness and limited range of motion.  Some days I just don't feel well, although I don't feel bad in any way I can pinpoint.  This process is not over for me.