Skipping Stones

Ah the drama never ends! Last Wednesday I was taken to the emergency room at 5:30 in the morning because I was in severe pain. I woke up before 5 with an ache in my back, on the left side, and it kept getting worse and worse. I tried changing positions in bed to no avail. I quickly got dressed and waited downstairs for my dad to finish getting ready (he was already up and getting ready for work at this time). I called my mom, she was at work (she works the night shift), and she asked if I could wait till she got home, but I told her no, I couldn't. At this point I could barely walk and barely talk. I had never been in so much pain in my entire life! And this is counting all the surgeries I've had too! My dad took me to the ER, where it seemed like forever until I was given some relief, in the form of dilaudid--thank you God! I ended up having a CT scan and they didn't find anything from it, but from the urinalysis they pretty much confirmed the presence of a kidney stone. Turns out you can get them from having too much calcium in your diet. I take calcium supplements to counteract the possibility of osteoporosis from the ovarian suppression I'm doing to prevent the cancer from coming back...oye. So I decided to give up taking the supplements, obviously I get enough calcium in my diet even though I don't drink milk. I took the rest of the week off from work and life in general. Now I'm just tired :) and oh so pain free :D

In other news, my genetics test came back and I tested negative for Li Fraumeni syndrome! Yay! Thus, right now my cancer is just a fluke of nature; but most likely I'll just be waiting on science to come up with another test. They did find a variant in the gene though, but turns out that is just benign and quite normal.

Unfortunately my blood tests this past month have still come back in the premenopausal range, despite my efforts at ovarian suppression. But they did lower a little bit, so there is hope that maybe in a few months I'll be where I need to be, we shall see. Lately though there is recent evidence to suggest no added benefit of ovarian suppression over Tamoxifen, so maybe it'll be okay that I'm just on Tamoxifen. Although, that has it's share of wonderful side effects, but the only part I'm experiencing is loss of appetite and hotflashes. I'll have to have ultasounds every year too, to make sure I'm not developing endometrial cancer--a rare, but possible side effect.

Hopefully soon I'll be able to get my drain pulled, but so far I am very pleased with the results :) It has been absolutely wonderful having a pair of breasts now. I knew I didn't feel completely whole after the mastectomy and that I yearned to be able to look at my body and not be reminded of everything that's happened--but I didn't realize how far reaching that all was. Now I feel like my old self again, and I don't have to be self conscious about a prosthetic and some days I forget about the whole cancer ordeal :) Reconstructive surgery is amazing!

Life is really really good now :D