Some things they don't tell you about cancer, part 2. I'm tired.
Kind of a rant.
I'm leaving out my standard "I know how lucky I am" platitudes today. Sometimes it's okay that even a case of cancer that was reasonably easily treated sucks. A lot.
First, the meds.
There are tradeoffs with all things. My cancer was hormone-fed so my doctor put me on Tamoxifen which decreases my estrogen that can feed any errant cells that may have been missed in surgery. (It's more complicated than that, but that's for another day.)
From my body's perspective, my estrogen levels fell off a cliff more or less when I started taking this medication. Great for preventing cancer, not great for a body that relies on estrogen for a hell of a lot of things...so while I wasn't kicked into menopause technically, I got all the fun side effects.
The first one I noticed was sleep. Like, I stopped doing it. Mostly it was because I stopped being able to thermoregulate (everyone knows hot flashes are a thing for women of a certain age). Now I have a miracle drug I'm on (Veozah) which targets vasomotor symptoms that kept me up. I can finally sleep...but of course it's a brand new drug and is obscenely expensive. I got some relief from a manufacturer's savings program. More hoops to jump through, hoops that a lot of people wouldn't even know to do.
The second one is what I call "stabbies." Right after surgery, I'd get these stabbing pains regularly around my chest area (is it still my chest area?). Pinpoint stabbing pain that generally would only last a few seconds. I assumed it was nerve damage from all the stuff scraped out of there. It got better over time but lately, for no reason I can surmise, they are back. My oncologist has told me a few times that they'll persist for the foreseeable future. Today they are on my right side and it's just demoralizing to try to concentrate on a difficult problem and instead, feel like I'm being stabbed with a screwdriver over and over.
The third is that Tamoxifen has a lot of side effects...one of which is an elevated risk of uterine cancer. So I have to get exams regularly and now am being referred to gynecology to check me out because of some minor symptoms that are likely NOT cancer but we have to check to be sure and boy howdy I have seen this movie before and I didn't like how it ends.
Finally...pain.
Aside from the stabbies, I don't remember when I wasn't in pain.
Estrogen decreases inflammation and helps keep joints labile. When it decreases, things can get uncomfortable. The recommended treatments are
- Hormone replacement therapy which I'm not eligible for since I'm already taking medicine to knock my estrogen out
- Supplements like glucosamine. So far, nope.
- "De-stressing" which is...sure yeah. But I don't feel like my stress levels have correlated with my pain.
- Exercise. Which I do. A lot of. I train aerial arts 2-3x/week. I walk my dogs an hour a day most days, sometimes more. Not to mention that our house has so many flipping stairs that I practically stairmaster every day.