Mood: Nervous 😕
Today I had an appointment with my oncologist to discuss hormone therapy. This is one of the final steps in my treatment for breast cancer. I will be on medication for 10 years and it will give me a 75% chance of my cancer not returning.
Just as I did all summer long while undergoing chemotherapy treatment, they started my visit with taking a few vials of blood. I haven’t had my blood tested since my last chemo treatment and that was way back in the beginning of October, so I am nervous for the results which I will have by the time my oncologist walks in to see me….yes, it is that fast!
After they took my blood I went into an exam room and waited for my oncologist. As with most cancer oncologists and surgeons as well, my oncologist is very friendly, caring, a good listener and compassionate but also very direct as we are dealing with a serious disease. I trust him, I respect him and his opinion as he is here to help save my life. My blood test results showed that my white and red blood cell counts are a little low but nothing to be alarmed about. My body has been through a lot over the past year and it will take a bit to recover and have everything go back to normal. We talked about the different options as far as medication goes and he decided to put me on Anastrozole. He asked me to give the medication a month or two for my body to get used to it as some side effects will go away with time. But, he is not expecting me to have any major issues as I have done well with everything so far and my body will start to recover and get stronger as I get further and further away from all that I have gone through. If I have any severe side effects I will let him know immediately and we can try a different drug, there are two other drugs that he can put me on if I have any problems. I have often read about other breast cancer patients having a lot of terrible side effects from the hormone therapy meds, so I would be lying if I said I am not both scared and concerned about how my exhausted body is going to react. I have also noticed that a lot of patients end up opting out of taking the hormone therapy meds, much to their oncologists disappointed I am sure, but I don’t feel that I have that option and here is why.
When I came out of my first surgery back in April, which was to remove all of the cancer, I was moved from stage 2b to stage 3. We were expecting 3 to 5 lymph nodes to be removed but my surgeon ended up having to take out 18 which is a high amount, making my cancer not only invasive which we already knew, but very aggressive as it had spread so much in a relatively short period of time. My surgeon and oncologist seemed to ramp up the urgency in my recovery from surgery and my starting chemotherapy treatment as soon as possible. The words “very aggressive” and “maximum treatments” were used, everything had changed, and my anxiety went through the roof. I remember my surgeon telling me during my follow up appointment after my first surgery that all 18 lymph nodes were positive for cancer and that he was aggressive during surgery so my margins were clear, meaning that he removed all of the cancer up to where the surrounding tissue had no signs of disease. But, with all of that being said, I would now have to go through the maximum, aggressive chemotherapy, a reconstruction surgery, the maximum radiation treatments and hormone therapy for most likely 10 years, for my type and grade of breast cancer.
So you can see why I feel that I don’t have a choice when it comes to going forward with hormone therapy. Of course, I do have a choice, but to me it is a simple choice between doing everything my doctors and I can do to keep my very aggressive breast cancer from coming back, or giving breast cancer a chance to come back, bump me into stage 4 and eventually kill me as there is no cure for stage 4.
9 months have passed since my first surgery and in the meantime I have had two more surgeries, 20 weeks of chemotherapy and 25 radiation treatments and I am now facing another scary part of my treatment, but I will get through this like I have with everything else, prayer, love from my family and friends, and most definitely, a few more tears.