Updated: 1/2/03; 9:13:02 PM.
Jogger Honey
A story of a life that began after cancer
        

Monday, December 30, 2002

This has been a fine Christmas. We didn't do anything special. In fact, we were going to go to John's daughter's place, but we postponed it until Saturday because of the snowstorm. It feels so auspicious that it snowed on Christmas day. It was a wonderful day of not doing anything special, and playing lots of board games.

Last night we went to see Harry Potter Chamber of Secrets. It was a really great movie, and that's special coming from me. I'm very very particular about movies. In fact, I haven't seen a truly good movie in years and years (we only go to one or two a year, so I guess my qualifications as a critic are suspect). Still I thought the movie was outstanding. John said he liked it, but I think he was mostly so-so about it. He said it was too confusing.

It still never ceases to amaze me at how, after over a year of chemo-induced menopause, I'm still not used to the hot flashes. Every time I get one it reminds me that I have cancer and it makes me certain that my cancer will eventually kill me. Whenever I start thinking of dying, I know that a hot flash either has hit me or is imminent. It was a little frustrating in the movie. I just wanted to have an escape... a few hours that I could pretend I was a normal person... yet twice in the movie I was hit, and twice felt like the world was closing in on me, crushing me, strangling and stifling me. I'm beginning to understand why women in menopause have depression problems. It's definitely psychosis-inducing to have to go through this every two or 3 hours, 24-hours-a-day-7-days-a-week.  Sheesh. Is this how it is for women who are going through non-chemo-induced menopause? Compared to cancer treatments, this is a total cake walk. Yet there it is. In my face, nagging at me, harrassing me, annoying me, aggravating me, and there's no way to get rid of it. My nurse practitioner suggested black cohosh, and other people have suggested soy. But do some research on the Internet. None of those are really totally proven safe for women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer. Black Cohosh, even though it doesn't have estrogen properties, is thought to produce some estrogen-like reactions in the body (National Institute of Health report dated October 2002). Soy is the same way. I'd really rather try to overcome this than to go through cancer treatments again. If I liked my first year of treatments (Not!!), the second round the treatments are guaranteed to be worse. This is not something to take lightly. The lesson is, never accept your doctor or "fellow"'s suggestions without researching them.


9:52:56 PM    comment []

© Copyright 2003 Millie 2001.
 
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