Just another day

As you may have noticed, I have been a bit slack about my blogging. Just seem so darn busy lately. Can't imagine what I have been doing. Watching strange people parking in front of my house? Remember, this is also the neighborhood where I had to call the post office because I wasn't getting my mail (and we do have to pay our bills). It seems that the mailman would come out here, park his mail truck across from my house every day and then get into a car with some woman who didn't live in our neighborhood and leave for 3 hours or so. The mail might or might not get delivered after that. We got a new mailman and I don't know what happened to the old one or his girlfriend.

On another note, I went through another round of Herceptin yesterday. Nothing really newsworthy. Just the usual feeling of living in a slightly different dimension - as if my body had shifted about 1/2 cm out of itself so that I am here but not really here. I got very tired around 9:00, fell asleep and slept until about 10:00 this morning. My dreams were very strange including a very gory "pound of flesh" section starring Ronald Reagan. Go figure! That last bit ought to be enough to put anyone off of biological therapy just in case everything else I have told you doesn't.

From the number of people who have asked me about it, I am assuming that most folks have seen the news on the proposed reduction in usage of chemo for certain breast cancer patients. I do not fall into the category for the new protocol. It is for ER+/PR+ breast cancers which means that the cancer is Estrogen and or Progesteron positive meaning that the cancer is fed by those hormones. Mine is negative. Those BC patients with receptor positive tumors may bypass chemo and go straight to Tamoxifen or one of the aromitase inhibitors such as Arimidex or Femara. This is mostly the case for post-menopausal women since pre-menopausal women are less likely to be positive and more likely to have more aggressive BC. The interesting side note to this is that Herceptin, which has just been released for general use this year, may ultimately produce the same result for Her2 positive BCs such as mine. I had spoken to my oncologist about skipping part of my chemo since the Herceptin should wipe out any rogue cancer cells I might have had floating around in my system. He agreed that probably in the future, the need for chemo would be reduced due to Herceptin but acknowledged that the data wasn't in yet so we couldn't tell for sure. The data may also show eventually that I didn't need to do radiation either. Some preliminary data is already leaning that way. So.........5 years from now, when you hear that Herceptin has reduced the need for chemo and radiation, remember that you heard it here first. :) Unfortunately, for me, it is too late. I had to go through the devastating effects of both the chemo and radiation including the long term damage to my heart, mind, nerves and who knows what else. Good for anyone else out there who may have to face this in the future.

After all of that, let me just say, that despite all I have been through, it has still been a great year. I have been able to spend more time with my friends and family and have been amazed by the amount of support I have received from all sides.