Because We Get It
I have been going to the same gym probably for eight years or so. I can ' t remember how long, nor to ask if they can tell me sometime while I am there. But its a great place for me and my ailments. It is also full of all kinds of other ' not-quite-healthy ' people. O2 tanks, rollators, walkers, canes, and other body supports are not uncommon.I have met many people there who I chit chat with while doing cardio and between resistance exercises. Its a very dedicated group who goes to the gym because of the extra attention we get for all our ailments. We get to know each other and notice when someone is not around for a while...
Source: Caroline's Breast Cancer Blog - March 4, 2018 Category: Cancer & Oncology Tags: cancer bonds gym support talking Source Type: blogs
More Annoyance
I try to eat and drink healthy. I try to avoid premade ' chemical ' food and use whole ingredients, meaning real, unprocessed food. In the mornings it may not be wise to get between me and my first cup of coffee. Later in the day, I like my herbal tea for its flavors and lack of caffeine anytime after 10 am. My husband makes fun of all the different kinds of herbal teas I have. I just like to be able to choose which one I am in the mood for.I also subscribe to tips from WebMD to help keep me up on how to be healthier, what to do or eat or what not to. Usually I find this helpful.But not yesterday.I got an email ongood and ...
Source: Caroline's Breast Cancer Blog - March 2, 2018 Category: Cancer & Oncology Tags: annoyance breast cancer hormone receptor status Source Type: blogs
Cancer Not As Scary?
How scary is a breast cancer, or any other type of cancer diagnosis these days? Thisarticle, Thanks to advances, diagnosis of breast cancer isn ’t as frightening as it was, claims it ' s not as scary as it used to be due to advances in diagnosis and treatment. However I beg to disagree. That is not the only reason. And societally, we have not changed enough.Do you remember in the 1970s and earlier when people didn ' t talk about cancer? No, they whispered about it. So-and-so has cancer.... when ' s the funeral? Nice sequence there. But that is how life was. No one talked about cancer because it was a death sent...
Source: Caroline's Breast Cancer Blog - February 25, 2018 Category: Cancer & Oncology Tags: breast cancer breast cancer treatment cancer diagnosis Source Type: blogs
What If The Pathologist Is Wrong?
And they won ' t review all the tests. This is a two part misadventure.First I was horrified by thisfirst story where two women were found to have been misdiagnosed by a pathologist at a hospital in Ireland. Their original breast cancer diagnoses were incorrect. One woman was diagnosed with DCIS in 2010 and had a mastectomy. Based on the original pathology she was not required to have any additional treatment. In 2012, to the surprise of her and her doctor, her cancer came back." Her original 2010 biopsy had shown invasive cancer but this had been missed.The hospital said this was a mistake that any pathologist could have ...
Source: Caroline's Breast Cancer Blog - February 22, 2018 Category: Cancer & Oncology Tags: breast cancer treatment cancer diagnosis medical errors pathology report Source Type: blogs
How The Post Cancer Brain Works
I have lots of aches and pain. This is a proven fact. You can ask any of my doctors. And I am also a klutz. And I have the battle scars to prove it.Last week, I tripped over my father ' s wheelchair in the waiting room of the chemotherapy department. How embarrassing. In front of maybe 40 people waiting for their appointments. They all noticed.This is what happened. We arrived at the hospital and my father grabbed a wheelchair. He has a bad leg so he pushes a wheelchair around instead of using a cane or walker. It ' s easier for him. He checked in for his appointment and we sat down to wait for him to be called. He parked ...
Source: Caroline's Breast Cancer Blog - February 20, 2018 Category: Cancer & Oncology Tags: brainless cancer bonds falls klutziness more pain Source Type: blogs
A Good Book Ruined By A Bit of Reality
I am a bookworm. As a child I always wanted to go to the library and didn ' t mind that if I read my newly selected books on the way home I might start to be a bit woozy from the wiggly New England roads. (Highways are much better for car reading.)In times of stress (read ' medical disasters ' among other things) I often turn to books as my personal form of avoidance. This was fine until my medical maladies kept interfering with my reading enjoyment. That would really suck.During college, after thyroid cancer, with my small paperback book collection, I would avoid studying or read in bed something less enlightening than an...
Source: Caroline's Breast Cancer Blog - February 18, 2018 Category: Cancer & Oncology Tags: books cancer stigma coping reading Source Type: blogs
Comparing Prognostic Breast Cancer Tests
Back in the late 2000 ' s, I heard about the new Oncotype Dx test that was just coming available for women who had early stage breast cancer and could help in the decision making process - whether to chemotherapy or not. The test was supposed to tell your risk of recurrence. That was great news (of course I was not eligible because of my medical history...) and many women found their risk and made the big chemotherapy decision.New research has looked at the results of these tests and compared them. They looked at these four tests: Oncotype Dx Recurrence Score, PAM50-based Prosigna Risk of Recurrence Score (ROR), Breast Can...
Source: Caroline's Breast Cancer Blog - February 16, 2018 Category: Cancer & Oncology Tags: breast cancer treatment cancer recurrence test results Source Type: blogs
Treatment Resistance Breast Cancer
Most breast cancers are hormone receptor positive or (ER+) and are treated with multiple therapies including chemotherapy and hormone therapies including tamoxifen and aromatase inhibitors. But the problem is then that after they metastasize, a third of them become resistance to treatment and will cause your demise." Such endocrine therapies, including tamoxifen and aromatase inhibitor drugs, can prevent recurrence of early breast cancer, and can slow the progression of metastatic disease. However, in about one-third of patients with metastatic ER-positive breast cancer, treatment with endocrine therapies leads ...
Source: Caroline's Breast Cancer Blog - February 15, 2018 Category: Cancer & Oncology Tags: breast cancer treatment cancer research clinical trials metastatic cancer Source Type: blogs
Doctors As Patients
I think doctor ' s make the worst patients. A friend ' s father, she told me, was a doctor but ignored his own cancer symptoms and said he was fine until he wasn ' t. I have never met a doctor who rushed to be a patient....But I think the best training for a doctor is to be a patient - particularly a patient of the disease or ailment they treat. This would provide so much more understanding for them.Here is the story ofa British breast cancer surgeon who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015 and finally returned to work in 2017. She never expected to face this diagnosis. I don ' t anyone ever does." Doctors face particu...
Source: Caroline's Breast Cancer Blog - February 14, 2018 Category: Cancer & Oncology Tags: being a patient breast cancer treatment doctors surgery Source Type: blogs
Doctor Questions
We are always told to write down your list of questions for your doctors and even bring someone to write down the answers. This can be appropriate for when you are first diagnosed with something nasty. But it doesn ' t hold true for regular follow ups with your other doctors.Over the years, I have learned not only to bring a list of doctor questions to appointments. But I have also learn to break it down into as few as possible, into two categories.Category one is for the list of issues you have noted since last seeing them. For example you had the flu in November for ten days. Or have been under a lot of stress from...
Source: Caroline's Breast Cancer Blog - February 13, 2018 Category: Cancer & Oncology Tags: coping doctor appointments doctor questions Source Type: blogs
Brachytherapy for Breast Cancer Follow Up
Back in 2007, when I was diagnosed and treated for my breast cancer, I heard about this new technique for the radiation portion of treatment,brachytherapy. I was jealous. It was not offered at my hospital. The big thing I liked was that it took so much less time for treatment.Breast cancer treatment takes a LONG time. I was diagnosed at the end of May, after two surgeries that went into July, I finished chemo in December, and needed one more surgery (don ' t ask). I was then facing 7 weeks of radiation. I just wanted to be done. Since brachytherapy wasn ' t available I had the standard radiation treatment. I couldn ' t eve...
Source: Caroline's Breast Cancer Blog - February 11, 2018 Category: Cancer & Oncology Tags: breast cancer treatment cancer research radiation Source Type: blogs
Genetic Testing and Non-High Risk
A person can be considered medically high risk due to their or a family member ' s medical history. If you are considered medically as high risk, you get popped into the category of give them lots more medical attention and ' lovely ' tests.Now withthe progress of genomic testing, its no longer a big expensive, rare proposition. However, why do we only test the high risk people? These are the people who already know they are high risk. But that leaves a lot of people who don ' t know they are high risk and could be. This doesn ' t make sense. Some new research asks if it wouldn ' t it make more sense to test more peop...
Source: Caroline's Breast Cancer Blog - February 10, 2018 Category: Cancer & Oncology Tags: breast cancer cancer prevention genetic testing ovarian cancer Source Type: blogs
Up and Down, Again
Everyone has ups and downs in their life, especially with their health. Or maybe I have more ups and downs than the average person. Okay, maybe my health has been on a downward slide for awhile few years now.However, I realized the other day that I was actually feeling pretty well for the first time in quite a while. I mean my back has been sore but the rest of me has actually been doing okay. Its kind of nice actually. And it makes me think how long its been since I felt that well.I had been feeling as if I was over-medicated in some ways for the past few years. I changed my pain management doctor and had reduced so...
Source: Caroline's Breast Cancer Blog - February 9, 2018 Category: Cancer & Oncology Tags: being healthy healthiness tired unhealthiness Source Type: blogs
Overloaded with Instructions
I get it. I have a lot of ailments so I am in a lot of groups and follow a lot of organizations for their health tips. So I get lots of email. Tons of email to be precise. Some of it gets the delete button right away - especially if the subject line doesn ' t tell me anything.But then Iread glance at a lot of them before deleting. But often they provide suggestions or instructions how to be healthier for whichever ailment. But now I am overloaded with instructions/suggestions this week:No more asparagus for me because itcan lead to breast cancer spread. I like asparagus. Damn.Exercise can reducebreast cancer recurrence. I ...
Source: Caroline's Breast Cancer Blog - February 8, 2018 Category: Cancer & Oncology Tags: breast cancer confusion fibromyalgia instructions rheumatoid arthritis Source Type: blogs
My Back Pain Break Is Over
Just over a year ago, I switched to a new back pain doctor because my old one was an idiot. I like my new doctor. I saw him a whole bunch of times through 2017. At my last appointment, he said to me " instead of scheduling your next appointment, why don ' t we wait and see how you do and you call me when you need to see me? " I thought that was fine. I have not seen him since November and have nothing scheduled.Unfortunately, my back is very unhappy with me in many ways. The pain level breaks through my pain patch. This has been going on for a week or so. I might wait another week or so before calling but I don ' t know ho...
Source: Caroline's Breast Cancer Blog - February 6, 2018 Category: Cancer & Oncology Tags: back pain doctor appointments doctor questions Source Type: blogs
