Breast Cancer Care Forum

Hi I've been 7 years almost since dx (grade 2, stage 2 invasive, wle, surgery, chemo rads). I've been having yearly mammograms but recently I keep reading more and more about the dangers of mammogram and how they can cause more problems than resolve. I am now contemplating going for thermal imaging scans instead of mammogram but would love to hear from anyone who's also gone down this route or is considering it. It is a scary prospect, going off the recommended plan of action, but at same time I am thinking that all that radiation can't be good and thermal imaging picks up changes in the breast much earlier than mammogram can anyway. Any advice, comments, would be really appreciated to help me make my decision. Thank you. Carrie  ... View more

Hi all, I went through a chemo induced menopause aged 39 and then a year later had my ovaries removed. I finished my five years of arimidex last November. Just recently I've had more hormonal issues (what I hope are hormonal issues) a return of the flushes, tingling in extremities, legs and ankles and burning mouth syndrome. It's driving me a bit crazy. I had an x ray to look at my back and all came back clear as did blood tests. I would love to know if anyone experienced a chemo menopause, then had a return of symptoms. I am not 45. What I believe is happening, is that my body is now taking itself through a more normal natural menopause despite having no ovaries etc. Is this possible? Has anyone else experienced these menopausal symptoms so late after having chemo and ovaries removed. would be great to know so that I feel as if i'm not going mad. Carrie  ... View more

Hi all, I haven't come on here for a while but found it really helpful when I've had fears about the odd aches and pains. I am currently experiencing a lot of fizzing and tingling in my left thigh, leg and ankle which can sometimes go to my upper left part of back too... as if someone has set off an alka seltzer under my skin! I am a bit worried about this as all my blood tests came back fine but recently I've read that tumours pressing on the spinal column can cause this too. Overall it just feels as if my skin is crawling a little bit. I have no pain or discomfort in my back at all. If this is a tumour in my back, would I feel pain with it too? and pain in the legs. As I say there is no pain at all but it hasnt' cleared up after a month and i'm starting to get a little worried although trying to keep things in perspective too. I know with radiation you can get long term nerve damage also too with lymphodema but I am wondering if that would start so late on, i.e. 6 years down the line. If anyone has experienced the crazy fizzing tingles then please let me know what your outcome was. I am now discharged from the hospital so perhaps I would  need a referral back to my cancer team? Many thanks for reading this and hope you are having a good day xxxxx  ... View more

I am here really to read some other posts in relation to osteoporosis (some side effects of early menopause) but I have found myself reading a lot of recent posts from newly diagnosed ladies and I feel compelled to write something. I myself was diagnosed in September 2007 aged 39 - a long five years and six months ago... in those early days, I remember just been consumed with really dark thoughts... thinking it would spread and that my life was pretty much over. I then got on with the treatment... counted the chemos off one by one... then the rads, one by one... then started taking arimidex... I never thought I'd last five years on that stuff but I did...and I"m still here. I remember the fear, I still get it from time to time, with every new ache or pain as we all do... and living in cancer's shadow is not the easiest but I just wanted to say, I feel for you all because I have been there in those early days (mine was grade 2, 1.4cm, stage 2, her2+ er+) and you know what... you do get your life back, for many this is a reality... I am still (touch wood) cancer free or at least NED and I feel really well again and ran a 10k last year to mark my 5 year anniversary post dx. So whatever kind of you day you are having and if you feel you can't see tomorrow let alone five years on, or ten years on... know that it is there in your future, that the sun will come out again for you and there will be a life again, a slightly altered reality, but nevertheless a life - as women who are living with cancer are absolute proof of...it is a richer life for having faced your own mortality and realised just what is important! Love, strength, friendship and family, determination, taking time for yourself, treating yourself with sensitivity, love and kindness... these things helped me (plus loads of green superfoods, a handful of supplements and a bit of peace... bob's your uncle, fanny's your aunt). Good luck to you, your good days will soon outweigh your bad in time and you will find a way through this, whatever your particular dx. Carrie x ... View more

Hello I posted in another thread but not sure it's still been used so thought I would start a new one, I have for the last. 4 years and 7 months been on arimidex and aromasin as a I had to keep switching when the se's got so bad. This year I've felt the side effects were becoming more intense as the ingredients reach saturation point in my blood. I had a rarer side effect of recurrent sinus infections which I needed two courseslog antibiotics for this time around. It seems to me the arimidex dries out every single tissue lining!! Causing havoc. Anyway I switched to aromasin for three weeks to give myself a break from arimidex whilst fighting the infection and a week ago went back on to arimidex!! Oh dear. I have never experienced blues like it. I am crying all the time and feel as if I can'tcope with the slightest thing going wrong, I am irritable all the time and not very pleasant to live with. Have convinced myself i have cancer in the brain as i feel so all over the place. The blues are really bad this time and I'm feeling like its all pointless. My question now is, do I give up the arimidex? I am worn down with it yet still scared a little to give it up. Similarly I think the stress of it all can't help either so think it would be in my body's best interests to callits a day and continue to exercise and eat healthily and do all Ican to stay well. What would you do, anyone? I know my onc will just say "well it's your decision, the drug wasa only tested over 5 years so we can't advise you to stop' but I think if I didget a recurrence I can't imagine it wouldn't have happened if I have stayEd on the drug another 5 months do you?? I am driving myself crazy here as you can tell! Think I'm going to give it up! After all 4yr 7 months is some going and it must have done some good. Btw my dx was in 2007 lumpectomy 1.5cm tumour wide local excision 1 lymph node, 6 chemo, rads, 5 lots of herceptin (but my heart got damaged) cuddly toy(!) and an oophrectomy (ovaries removed!). Any advice at all would be appreciated. Hope you are all having one of those good days ! Carrie ... View more

Yesterday I had my yearly mammogram. My fourth since being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2007. It was a perfectly fine experience - as perfectly fine as it can be when your breast is jammed into a cold vice and you’re totally immobilized, rendered powerless, and at the mercy of a cold, hard machine… The nurse then did that incredibly rude thing where they wordlessly disappear for five minutes (to look more closely at the images presumably)… and you’re sat semi naked in a cold room, staring at the silent, heavy machine in front of you, wondering what it saw… hardly breathing at all. Driving home, I became aware that I was crying. No, it was more pathetic than that, it was weeping! I didn’t know why as my mind was a total blank, my eyes fixed on the road and the sat nav which read 11 miles from home… and then ten miles from home… nine… eight… seven… and I remembered parts of the journey home on the day I was told I had cancer. Mind flipping from a total blank then fast forwarding to an imaginary bald, poorly, suddenly limited future. In the four years that have passed so much has changed. If you’d told me then that I’d even be here in four years I’d have kissed you… I wouldn’t have kissed Dr at Hospital who seemed to take great delight in telling me if I’d left it much longer, it’d have been curtains within six months. Thanks Doc. Even the promise of twelve months back then seemed more than I could hope for. Because in the very early days when you first find this stuff out, you don’t quite know how it’s going to pan out and information is fed to you in dribs and drabs as the results of tests become known…good news it’s early, bad news it’s a particular type blah blah…and so it was I moved from a big question mark to statistics that suggested if I went down the full on treatment route, I’d have something like an eighty six per cent chance of still being around in ten years time… OK, pretty high odds then better buckle down and hand my veins over… Words like ‘chemotherapy’ and ‘radiotherapy’ and ‘lumpectomy’ and ‘oophrectomy’ (all translating as ‘oh heck...to me’ as it started to sink in). Six months of my life passed in a blur… a blur of being sick, feeling vulnerable, spitting out falling hair and feeling slightly sorry for myself and also, if I’m honest… just slightly ashamed. Ashamed of how I’d got myself into this situation… feeling very much like a dolphin caught in a net (maybe not a dolphin more a big, ugly pike with a hook through my top lip)… suddenly seeing the world through a prism; the infected and the uninfected and all the while trying to posit myself away from this group I’d found myself in – I didn’t fit the profile, wasn’t (madly) over weight, didn’t drink (much), didn’t smoke… so why, why had I got myself into this mess and why did I still think deep down that it was something that I had done to myself… As I rolled up my sleeve for my first lot of chemo, I heard, ‘good job you don’t have children’ from one nurse, as if the situation would be all the more ‘tragic’ if I had; as if I’m meant to think myself lucky for never having had children, the crassness not even registering with her that that’s now an impossibility with chemo making me infertile… Fast forward to chemo number five, collapsed veins and seven failed attempts to cannulate me and any kindly reassurance has given way to irritation and condescension ‘your veins just aren’t playing today are they missus’… stabbing at another vein, oblivious to the pain and big fat tears that are streaming down my face… And then, before you know it, you’re shot out the other end… body a nuclear wasteland where I’m told nothing nasty can grow at least not for a year or two… and then let’s see what happens… as if they sit back after blasting you to bits and cross their fingers really tightly hoping it’s done the trick…and so far it seems to have done (fingers crossed still really tightly). But let’s be clear. For all the war analogies, there’s no battle to be fought here, there are no heroes present and there are certainly no angels at the hospital… there are just people getting on, doing a job, some better than others… just like there are people getting on with having cancer… not fighting it, just living with each tired moment and seeing what it brings, good news or bad, it’s just a lottery and this is where I’m at four years on. I am in that waiting period again, waiting for results… waiting to see what my body is doing in this post nuclear state… hoping it’s found a way to replicate its cells in an orderly fashion and not go renegade… and to that end I’ve tried my best to help it along. My kitchen resembles a herbal food store and I realize how very lucky I am to be able to afford to buy the green power drinks and supplements I feel I need to give my body the best chance. I’ve moved from the early days of no dairy, no sugar, no this no that, to moderation… to sensible eating really, lots of fresh (organic if affordable) vegetables, fish, chicken, salads, filtered water… and limit the things I just know don’t agree with me (so little sugar, limited diary, very limited red meat and no processed or microwaved ready meals). And my relationship with my body has changed. I seem to have moved from seeing it as this massively imperfect, sometimes slobby flatmate that I can’t live, can’t live without, something that’s always just there, neither dynamic nor offensive (well sometimes)… to now seeing it as something I have a symbiotic relationship with… like caring for and nurturing a plant that feeds me… listening to how it feels, trying to do things I know will make it smile… and that’s been a revelation. Like so may things have been a revelation. From the way we all play our part in this ‘cancer industry’; those brave, pink ladies doing their bit on their ‘slut walks’, to the docs knowingly over prescribing meds that may well leave you with a chronic heart condition (whilst knowingly admitting the pharmaceuticals have no interest in testing drugs over shorter periods of time and hey if they leave you with a heart condition, well there’s always another pill to fix that)… I’ve felt jaded and bamboozled, confused and dumbstruck by the amount of conflicting information there is out there… the best you can do is weigh it all up, make your own mind up, ask questions, don’t be afraid to keep asking until you understand as much as they do at least (which sometimes worryingly feels like it isn’t much at all)… though I love my oncologist for his honesty (and patience!). One mile to home… and so this is where I’m at. Hoping for more good news, knowing that if I get it, I’m one of the lucky ones, not one of the ones who valiantly fought it and won… Those that find their cells don’t behave are no less valiant, they haven’t lost a battle, they haven’t let themselves down. And this is where I think the feelings of shame come from. Our language and reactions to cancer is so steeped in victim/sufferer winner/loser analogies, it’s no wonder if you feel you’re on the losing side of life, you start to wonder where you went wrong. I now know I didn’t go wrong. I just got unlucky. But even seeing yourself as ‘unlucky’ can kickstart so many false notions. These things just happen I guess but they happen when certain conditions are present, this much I have learned… best we can all do is not see ourselves as outside of this and view those with cancer with pity… cancer is on the increase…. the profile of the overweight drinker/smoker is not helpful, there are many, many things that depress our immune systems and make them vulnerable to cell damage and cancer (for my part I’ve felt emotional stress, processed foods, lack of sleep, cellular dehydration all potentially played a part in creating the perfect storm conditions)… my advice would be balance – work but don’t over work, laugh a lot, have quiet times, offload as much stress as you can and be honest with yourself about how stressed or how tired you might be feeling, take holidays and if you can’t, just take time out regularly to do things you love, drink booze now and again (pref red wine – in moderation) and drink lots of filtered, preferably alkaline water… oh and eat your greens… all good sensible advice that your mother probably taught you. To anyone who’s just got the news and is just starting out on all of this, know that like everything, the bad days will pass and good days will come again…and though cancer has no real upsides, you definitely feel the good days so much more acutely… it’s living in cancer’s shadow that I feel takes some mastering. ... View more

Hi I switched to aromasin inhibitor last october sfter joint pains on Sromness became too much. I feel so much better on aromasin but in past few weeks have lost my smell and sense of taste (not totally) and have a metallic taste in mouth. Two lots of antibiotics for a head cold and still no improvement. Starting to wonder if it's a side effect of drug even though it's not a listed side effect on pamphlet. Saying that I know we all have loads of side effects that aren't listed. Just wondered if anyone has had these symptoms at all or if anyone thinks it could be linked to drugs or even (god forbid) a recurrence. Any info at all would be so much appreciated as it's driving me crazy at the moment! Many thanks for reading this. Carrie ... View more

HI I've just nearly given myself heart failure as Ive found a lump in my left breast. I was dx'd in sept 07 and had successful treatment, the usual chemo rads surgery. I've now found a lump in my other breast.. lower down, near to breast bone in the tissue on the lower right side of breast. it feels moveable but there's a definite lump, i am so so so scared as i can't face going through all of this again and am worried so much right now. will ring docs in morning. anyone know if it's common for bc to return but in other breast, any advice would be so welcome right now, thanks, carrie xx ... View more