Cancer Treatment Update: June 11 - July 16
It has been over a month since I last updated my blog on how my treatment is going so there’s quite a lot to cover in this post, but thankfully things are going a lot better than they were going a month ago.
Anxiety Medication Update
A few months ago, I talked about how I was going to need to get off of my anxiety medication, Paxil, because I can’t take it while on Tamoxifen (le, sigh). I was really nervous about switching because I’ve been on Paxil since I was 19 and it is the only medication that seemed to help my anxiety. In August, when I got my cancer diagnosis, I needed more medication for the anxiety because Paxil wasn’t enough. I added Buspar to my regimen, taking 7mg twice a day, along with 20mg of Paxil. These are average doses of both medications.
I took my last dose of Paxil on June 10, and switched to 20mg of Celexa and continued 7mg x 2 of Buspar from that day forward. About a week into stopping Paxil, I started having some pretty significant anxiety. Whether that was caused by me just being anxious about getting off of my meds or because I was legitimately anxious is unknown, however, I ended up calling my primary care office on the 23rd after having a mini meltdown and asked to up my Buspar to 10mg x 2 a day because I was having significant anxiety and felt really awful. The increase has helped significantly and I have been taking 20mg of Celexa and 10mg x 2 of Buspar daily since the 23rd of June.
Now, I just have to get onto Tamoxifen and I am REALLY not looking forward to it. I’ve heard nothing but horror stories about side effects and I think part of why I’m putting it off is because I can. It’s not like chemo or radiation where I have to get it done and I don’t have time to think about the side effects. Sometimes too much time to think is what ends up making you think your way out of something, I guess.
Weird Hair Update
Ever since I lost all of my eyebrows and lashes six weeks after finishing Taxol I’ve been hyper-focused on them. I am convinced that they are still not thick like they were before chemo and I stalk them in the mirror a lot. I think they are still thinner than they were before and I never want to go through losing them ever again. I’ve decided that I want to get microblading done so that if they fall out again then at least I will still have something on my face. I’ve talked to a few people who said that their lashes fell out twice after finishing Taxol, so I’m still worried they will fall out again and sometimes I think they’re falling out in clumps and that they are not long enough. I know that Herceptin can affect hair (one of the side effects is thinning of hair) but, what the heck. Can I just please have my old lashes and brows back?
Why It’s Important to Ask Questions - Herceptin Update
After getting my last dose of Herceptin in mid-June, I felt terrible. My blood counts had gone down between doses seven and eight, and this along with switching my anxiety medications really threw me off. I started going through google and trying to find out what was going on with my body, which is never a good idea. Ultimately, I found myself down a rabbit hole that led to me messaging my Oncologist asking for specific data backing my treatment plan. To be honest, I am always amazed that for some reason in terms of medical treatment for cancer, there are a lot of unknowns. It seems like there’s a lot of shooting in the dark, and I’ve come to discover that medical oncologists are just following some general protocol that is “research based” but they don’t actually know the stats or have answers as to why patients get the side effects they get on these treatment plans. It’s frustrating. If I ask what causes chemo brain, they don’t know. My cognitive abilities are the one thing that I have going for me. I’m not a natural athlete, but I’m naturally good at school, at using my brain. If they take that from me, what do I have left?
After my counts went down, I asked for data, specific numbers not a general statement, about what the percent chance of recurrence would be after I finished Taxol/Herceptin. I was given the link to an article from New England Journal of Medicine and when I was perusing through it I stumbled upon information that I wasn’t aware of regarding my Herceptin treatment. Apparently, I am now getting three times the dose that I was getting of Herceptin because I’m only getting it once every three weeks. For eight rounds I was completely unaware of this, because nobody told me. Although I was very frustrated that nobody felt the need to tell me this, I was also extremely relieved that this could be the reason my side effects after treatment were not as mild as I thought they would be. I’m getting three times the dose I was getting, of course I’m not going to feel amazing after! This was a huge weight off of my shoulders.
Chemotherapy Round Nine - July 1
After finding out that I was getting triple the dose of Herceptin, and getting my anxiety medications right, I felt much better going into my ninth round of Herceptin. Although I didn’t feel good that night mentally, (I always feel sad and tired after treatment) I was happy to see that my blood counts went up a tiny bit from round eight, and have felt much stronger the last two weeks. I’ve been taking an iron supplement almost every day and a multivitamin (something I’ve never done before) and I think the iron is helping me feel stronger.
My goal this round was to hike as much as possible to see how much I could do physically while on treatment. So far, I’ve done over 65 miles on trail, including a two night backpacking trip. On top of that, I’ve done weight training two times and went on a five mile walk with my mom. My hope is to do three more days on trail before my next round of treatment and get my mileage to 100 trail miles in three weeks. Why? Because I want to see what I can do while on treatment.
This is Not Normal
What I’m doing is not normal behavior during cancer treatment and I need that to be clear because the last thing I want to do is make people who are going through treatment feel like they’re not “good enough” because they’re not doing what I’m doing while in treatment.
My regimen isn’t that intense, especially now. I’m only getting one drug, and it’s a very mild, targeted therapy. Yes it is “something” but it’s not even close to what many people get for treatment when they have cancer.
I’m doing this for me. I’m doing it to compete against 2020 Rebecca, to see if I can beat her yearly mileage. I’m also doing it so that if someone else who is athletic gets cancer they have data on what can be accomplished while on a cancer treatment plan, albeit one that is not what I would consider to be aggressive. When I got cancer and found out I was going to have chemotherapy I tried to find other “athletes” that had chemotherapy to find out what they were able to do while on treatment and only found one person to talk to - a swimmer. I know now that there are a lot of people who hike through cancer treatment (I’ve talked to many people who have come out of the woodwork once I started posting about my treatment publicly) but I have yet to find another blog that I could read in order to know what can be done despite going through treatment. If nothing else, at least now there is one blog out there showing what one hiker did during cancer treatment.
