I've been looking forward to #12 as a milestone - I am now halfway done with my adjuvant therapy, and 2/3 done with my total treatment. Only six infusions left!
Seth and I spent hours on Friday morning talking through my fears for my treatment, and I cried more than I have at any time during this illness, including at diagnosis. He listened to my concerns and read the articles that I handed him and dried my tears, and ultimately said, "We need better information." I realized that he was right - we didn't need more information, but we needed actual data, not anecdotes. Even the articles from reputable sources were of limited helpfulness when they quoted doctors' opinions rather than facts, and many of them contradicted each other about which side effects were most likely to occur. But then I found the results of a National Cancer Institute study called NSABP P1 , wherein 13,000 women at high risk of getting breast cancer were randomly assigned to receive either tamoxifen or placebo. The primary goal of the trial was to assess the value of tamoxifen in preventing cancer, but it also included a set of questionnaires to as...
Over the last few months, I've had a growing awareness that as a seriously ill person, I should have some kind of documentation in place about my wishes should things take a turn for the worse. Really, every adult should, and I realize now that I at least should have done it prior to giving birth - but as a young, healthy person, it really just wasn't part of my consciousness. Until I started looking into it, I was pretty hazy about what the different types of documents were and what the terminology meant. I learned that a dvance health care directive is the general term for a legal document that spells out your decisions about end-of-life care ahead of time. Advance health care directives generally include two important components: a power of attorney for health care and a living will. A power of attorney for health care names your health care agent (also sometimes referred to as a health care proxy), the person you designate to make health decisions for you if you are una...
Yesterday was the fourth anniversary of my cancer diagnosis. It's not a date to celebrate, nor even one that I like to acknowledge, but I also can't ignore what it is to me, its significance and its sadness. I did feel sad yesterday. The world seems almost unbearably full of cruelty lately - children torn away from their parents at the very moment they hope to have arrived at a better life - a mother orca swimming with her stillborn baby on her back for weeks, unable to let him go back into the sea - the horrible abuse of innocents by the men of God entrusted to save their souls - a genocide being perpetrated against defenseless women and children, today, on this planet, without a finger lifted by those who have the might to stop it. It's hard to see any purpose or plan in so much suffering. But then I think that the world has always been cruel, no more or less so now than at any time in human history. What is different is me. Becoming a mother and becoming a cancer patie...
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