Not Every Cloud Brings Rain

Imagine that there is a watermark on this picture....for some reason I'm having trouble with Photoshop getting the watermark to stay. grrr.

This week has been a little tough. Not only have I been having pain in my hip, but yesterday I started to have some discomfort in my ribs as well. Toss in the fact that I also discovered that I have Lyme disease (and am now on antibiotics but feel tired and often dizzy), its been a little rough.

Usually, I keep my head about things, but the rib thing really made me a little nervous. Since I couldn't remember how much calcium and vitamin D I'm supposed to be taking (I finished the bottle and threw it out and then talked to my sister who is taking LOTS of both) I decided it was time to call my oncologist and ask him about the dosage and also to give him the heads up that I was feeling something in my ribs....which is one of the locations of the new metastases. I figured that would give him some time to think about what to do next if the Faslodex wasn't working.

He called me back within a couple of hours. and told me that for some reason, even if Faslodex is working it doesn't usually show up right away. He said that he new of cases where they had discontinued the drug, and then two months later they saw improvement. He also said that he has had very good results with his patients on this drug and didn't have any bad cases to report, but that he had several patients who had been on it for 6 years and were still doing well.

Ok...so why don't we know about these things? I think part of it may be that quite often what reporters and the media are looking for are cures. What Faslodex does isn't curing cancer, but making it be a chronic illness. Just another case of keeping us patched together until we can find something better.

I'll take it. And I'm very grateful I have a doctor who is willing to listen to me and to give me encouragement even when things look rather dismal. I'm not usually one to jump to conclusions. I'm also not one to always look totally on the dark side. However, since I have only known this doctor for 4 years, I never know how his office perceives me.