Hi ladies! Just a note from another who also sailed through chemo!
Had 3 FEC and 3 Tax. I told myself at the beginning I was determined that I wasn’t going to get ill, and I didn’t. So I’m a good case for positive thinking! I seriously believe in it working more than people realise.
Before I started chemo., my oncologist said that I would be very ill with sickness. I told him that I wasn’t a ‘sicky’ person. That’s got nothing to do with it, said he - you WILL be sick with these drugs.
Da dah! Didn’t get one bit of sickness or nausea, and had no need for the anti-sickness meds either. In fact - with the steroid injections - I couldn’t bloody stop eating!
Had a few shivers and shakes with the first dose of Tax, but went to bed - when I could - and slept it off. Had to have one night in hospital with a high temperature, but it turned out to be an ordinary throat virus that had given it to me - nothing to do with the chemo.
So be strong - and fight it! I was initially worried that it wasn’t doing its stuff, as I had hardly any side effects, but then I looked in the mirror and noticed my shiny bonce!
Oh wouldn’t it be wonderful if living with cancer meant nothing other than bringing on a fighting spoirit, wishing the cancer away and bingo…cancer gone.
Nobody’s cancer is like that. Cancer is a serious business, a life threatening illness which will kill many of us reading these threads tonight. It will kill me but I can still manage a cheery smile…the smile won’t cure my cancer sadly. Myths unfortnately still run amok as people like you claim that nothing more than a fighting spirit will bring the cure you want of breast cancer. What tosh. What uninformed rubbish, and how much your simply wrong assertions about cancer contribute to the slowness in really getting a cure for cancer.
I didn’t get sickness on chemotherapy either…thanks to anti emetic drugs, but I don’t think this because of my superior outlook to having cancer…its because the drugs helped my particular metabolic reaction reject the sicky components of the drug. (I have had 8 different chmotherapy drugs, and 40 or 50 sessions.)
Your post is extremely unhelpful. Positive thinking may help some people feel better about how they cope with cancer, but it will NOT cure cancer. Its also a pretty meaningless thing to say. Who or what are you supposed to be thinking positive about.?
I was so ill with chemo I was pulled off of it after 4 doses.
It has NOTHING to do with positivity - you are just lucky to have a metabolism that works in a certain way.
Response to chemo is similar to pregnancy. Some women barely know they are pregnant - others are hospitalised with hyperemesis gravidarum. Are the ones who end up perilously ill and vomiting blood there because they weren’t positive enough?
Bully for you if you sailed through chemo - thousands don’t. And it has nothing to do with positivity or courage or any of that stuff. It is just sheer luck. I am sick to death of women being made to feel like they are not trying hard enough if they should feel desperately ill during treatment or actually die of this disease.
I am afraid I agree with Jane on the myth of positive thinking. I have lost several friends to the dreaded disease who really wanted to live, to see there children grow up etc. One friend whose husband was a GP had four children under the age of nine when she died of BC. She put up a fight, wanted to be there for her kids, but her time ran out, and nomatter how much positive thinking she had she died prematurely. This was the year before I was diagnosed, and a close friend of ours couldn’t cope when she discovered I had the dreaded disease too. I was in my late 30’s and my kids were 7 and 14. However I appreciate every day now. I know this illness will probablyt kill me but my spirit is good and I love life.I am not religous at all so cannot thank God but I keep taking the tablets and hope that each new regime will keep me going for a bit longer. best wishes from Scottich lass
Hmmm, can’t quite remember saying that positivity would equal a cure for cancer. What tosh, what ill-informed reading. It was obvious I was only referring to positive thinking re: not wanting the nausea side of the chemo to affect me.
Hi…I’m on my first chemo after many years of hormonal treatments…I’m on chemo for life now and so far, this particular chemo has been ok, it’s been do-able. But of course it’s all down to pure luck and I know some on the same chemo who have had one hell of a horrible time. I could have had a ‘positive’ approach or a ‘negative’ approach to starting this chemo. I don’t believe either would have had any bearing on the outcome. Good Luck to all going through chemotherapy.
Well now, would you believe it? There’s me getting a rollicking for trying to give somebody (i.e. wills 1) some hope who was dreading their impending chemo., and - lo and behold - on another thread (Living with Secondary Cancer -“Warning … a bit of a rant”) we have Belinda describing herself as an optimist since being diagnosed, and Scottish Lass saying that she continues to be positive. Both posts dated today!!! Hypocrites or what?
I think there is a bit of a difference between stayting positive abd thinking that staying positive will cure you or get you through Cancer. Scottishlass ( not a hypocrit at all),
Jacqnotyetinthebox I’m a hypocrite because I’m hopeful I may have a few more years left?
My posting was in no way personal and I find your response offensive.
You claimed that through positive thinking you were able to fend off the nausea associated with chemotherapy.
That is just ridiculous and deeply offensive to women like myself who were desperately ill during chemo through no fault of their own.
In my earlier post I challenged you on this claim but you have chosen to ignore it and started lashing out at others as hypocrites.
Why do I have to keep repeating myself? I was merely attempting to cheer up wills1 - and saying that not everybody gets sick with chemo. It was obviously not relevant to you. Bloody hell, this is now soooooo boring.
I’m sorry you are bored by it but I think on a large forum like this it is important that myths and twaddle and exposed as such. And it is utter twaddle to assert that positive thinking works as some kind of anti-emetic. Because women start to feel inadequate if they feel unwell.
I think we need to take a breath here and find some common ground? Everyone deals with breast cancer in a different way, physically and mentally, isn’t that the point? and isn’t the point of this forum to share experiences? good, bad, positive, whatever. That is surely the strength of this website, speaking to women that are going through it. I think you can only explain what you have experienced and I also don’t think that Karen will assume that her experience will be exactly the same as Jacq’s?