This is sooooooooooooo true.
I am forty-three years old but I walk around feeling like a woman twice my age.
Today I have a headache. A pain pill and a nap helped this afternoon, but now it's back. I blame the weather. It has been rainy and humid and damp and gray and gloomy.... off an on for over a week. (I know I have no business complaining about the rain when Houston and other parts of Texas are under water, but still.)
I'm taking a self-imposed hiatus from the medicine that causes my joint pain. It's also the medicine that is supposed to help keep cancer away, but my body needs a break from hurting. I was on Arimidex for several months and the side effects were awful. Everything hurt all of the time. I had insomnia almost every night. Restless legs, weight gain, hair loss, the list goes on and on.
I asked my oncologist if there was something else I could try, so he gave me a different pill (same family of meds, just a different kind). I've been on that for a month and haven't noticed any improvement. Joint pain is the same, fatigue is debilitating, I still can't sleep - AND this medicine is $75 a month. Uh, no thanks. I sent my doctor a message last week explaining that this was not working. He was out until today, but the nurse said to go down to every other day or even stop taking it completely until she talks to him. I just sent another message asking if she's followed up with him.
I don't want to face cancer again. I don't want to do ANYTHING to increase my risk of cancer coming back. But I don't know if I can go on like this for the next 5-7 years. My knees crack every time I bend them. Sometimes I have to take stairs one at a time like a toddler because it hurts too much. My knuckles swell and ache in the morning - I haven't been able to get my rings off in weeks. I'm so tired all of the time, yet when I got to bed I toss and turn, alternate between sweating and freezing, and then my legs AND arms get too restless to lay there.
I take my vitamins. I try to eat well. I have been walking a lot lately, which is about the only exercise I can tolerate. And yet I always feel awful. Something's gotta give. I hope my doctor gets back to me tomorrow with a solution so I can get back to feeling somewhat like me again.
Speaking of tomorrow.... I have an appointment for an ultrasound (of my nonexistent female parts, which is interesting). The biopsy I had in Dallas a couple of weeks ago came back benign, which is GREAT. So hopefully this scan is just overkill and there will be nothing to find. Any prayers and good thoughts would be appreciated. And one the subject of scans.... my mom had a CT scan this morning, so send some good "clean scans" thoughts her way, too.
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