***Tamoxigang - thread number 40!***

[GoodbyeRubyTuesday]

Hello all! New thread as we have almost filled the last one. Help yourself to chocolate chip muffins from the trolley! :)

lady it's a bugger but loads can be done - I too have lung mets - am on oral chemo since last September (yike-that's nearly a year !) and doing v well...it's pesky but certainly not the end.
Have a lovely time at wedding and stick with us.
ruby another week until GCSE results, so not fretting just yet !

Hi LadyBeagle - sorry to hear your news, but am sure there are plenty of treatments which will be offered to keep it all under control, - several ladies on here with mets who will be able to offer lots of sensible advice and tips. Is your cancer responsive to herceptin? (I'm thinking it probably wasn't available when you were originally DX)
Have a lovely time at your family wedding.
Hope your DS has a great time at Uni - don't know if he is going to one of the Scottish Unis, - I was at Edinburgh many years ago and loved it.

Glad you enjoyed the film MAS, - T's subjects sound interesting, - DD did English and History A's too (and Music and Biology).

Malt - good luck for tomorrow, hope all goes well for you and you get in and out with minimum waiting around, - have you got a good book to read?

Good luck for little Pigeon tomorrow Shooting.

Enjoy your exercise class Ruby.

I have book club tomorrow morning, so am hoping no rain for my cycle ride. Old lady dog has been rather frail today and had a couple of her 'turns'

Gentle hugs to old lady dog

Good morning everyone. on the go. Hope gigs had an ok night.
Hello to ladybeagleeyes bugger about the secondaries. What a shock for you. Hope you have a lovely time at family wedding.
How is oldladydog today kk? Hope you have a nice bike ride my bike has a puncture :( and I would have liked to cycle the coast path here, maybe one day...

Hello all- am waving at you in slightly lacklustre way from hospital . Feeling bit sore and tired (usual hospital peace). Food is ok but I have choclit and bettys shortbread in my snack cupboard plus drugs.

Glad to hear news of emin. Topsy you all set for holiday? Amber how you feeling now? malt hope all goes smoothly today. Kurri hope old lady dog better today . Pigeon hope little pigeon results ok.

Thank you all so much for lovely posts and kind thoughts- I will come back and update properly but still feeling bit wobbly and weak.

Morning all.

Sorry to hear your news ladyb but like the others have said, there is plenty of support here and more treatments available now so hang in there

gigs great to hear from you and hope you are feeling far better very soon

MAS I intend to go and see the AP movie with DH, must try and get a babysitter toppssyyyyyyyyyyyyy !!!!!!

As for me, I saw my lovely surgeon yesterday and got the stitches out of my NOW FIXED WOUND !!!! Yayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy !!!

She said if the other side has not closed itself in two weeks then she is fixing that too. I know it is a very small thing in comparison to what a lot of you go through but I am giddy with excitement of being dressing free and to have my life back for a few months.

A big hello to everyone else and a happy Thursday !

. Healing less wobbly vibes winging your way ((gentle hugs)) Xx

Xpost hnd. Its good you have prospect of dressing free. Its been soooo long, it is a big thing.
Will be travelling today. :(

Great to hear from you gigs gentle hugs and there is NOTHING Bettys shortbread won't fix

here. Really was all braced for it to have gone wrong for little pigeon, didn't sleep last night for worrying it was going to be a repeat of all the tears and depression of last year, but it isn't, in fact it couldn't have gone better, she even managed f**g 100% in one (How can you get 100% in an arts subject ) . As she says I feel like I am actually clever now. All that anxiety and panic she put me through Is it too early for Thanks for all your good wishes, did the trick, if this can happen then a cure for Cancer really has to be just around the corner....... Sorry if this sounds smug and boasty but believe me she did deserve a break after coping with dyslexia, probably dyspraxia, and all the crap she has taken from girls, teachers and Gove in her school career.

Sorry brain is mush and should be being more altruistic but I loves you all.....

Ladybeagle, argh and and yes, the teams have many cunning ways to convert this stuff to long term nuisance now for the majority of people. It being a long term nuisance is of course not what you're after, but by 'eck there's a grand lot of people here. Have a seat and a

Gigs, I'm tired. Cheerfully and in a relieved way. But tired.

And I'm very relieved that you are back on the ward and well supplied with tempting food in sneaky locations. Rest up.

Shooting, hurrah re minipigeon!! Brilliant isn't it when our offspring stick two proverbial fingers up at the naysayers in education.
HND, wheeee re the possibility of a dressing-free life. You have had a right palaver, you really have.

hurrah for HND being dressing free

hurrah for mini-pigeon

for gigs - great to hear from you, hope you are feeling well enough to start digging that tunnel soon

bugger re mets lady - but as others have said lots of treatments now to help

malt - hoping round 2 is as uneventful as round 1. Re the bleurgh feeling - partly emotional (feeling low and very irritable, but I know it will pass in a couple of days) but mainly feeling woozy and wobbly, feeling faint if I stand for too long, breaking out in a hot sweat & generally feeling yuck...not as bad today as yesterday, hopefully gone by the weekend....

to everyone else and puts and toast on trolley

Yay for little pigeon that's great news
Gigs nice to hear from you, take care x
Love to everyone else

2nd chemo all went fine, had a nice man doing it today. Hair still shredding and ive got a wide parting but had cold cap again. He said they are getting the new system soon which plugs in. Also found out I'm on fec 100 which I think is a strong dose ?

hooray for little Pigeon - well done that girl! - are you having a small celebration loads of cake tonight?

malt - glad the 2nd round went OK, - sorry I know nothing about dosage of FEC - no doubt someone cleverer than me will be along soon with info.

hugs to Gigs - hope you are not feeling too sore, or too bored, - any news on when they might release you?

HND - hooray for fixed wound and stitches out, - you have had to put up with an awful lot with that wound, - but onwards and upwards now you are fixed

Betsey - I always felt quite wobbly and faint on chemo especially as you say standing for any length of time, - I don't know what to suggest, apart from taking it easy and just trying to ride it out, - hopefully it will ease a little bit as your WBCs increase. What cycle are you on now? (many apologies - I am hopeless at remembering exactly where everyone is)

Old lady dog is still a bit wobbly, but she is most days now sadly. I need to give her her medicine for her skin complaint, - it is drops that go on her back, but she has run pottered off and hidden in one of her nests when she saw me get the little pipette out, she hates the drops! Will have to sneak up on her when she is asleep.

Hi - have been feeling rather rough for a few days after Chemo No. 3 but am now on the antibiotics so hope to be back to feeling relatively reasonable.
I do feel for better having read some of the posts on this thread by people who have had all sorts of treatment for a long time and are getting on with their lives, doing things ..., so thanks Tamoxigang!
Malt I don't know about FEC as I have only had the T, but my dosage of T was 100 ml but has now reduced to 75 ml as I am having 8 doses instead of 6 in total. I thought the dosage was related to body size (and mine is generous, though I've lost at least one stone since diagnosis!)

Kurri poor old lady dog :(
Lily sorry you've been feeling rough and youre probably right about being related to body size I'm certainly not small !

geek alert they normally do FEC two ways FEC75 & FEC100 - the numbers relate to the dose of Epirubicin - 100 being stronger
They use your weight (and height?) to work out your square metre size & dose accordingly:
FEC100 -
5FU 500mg/sqm
Epirubicin 100mg/sqm
Cyclophosphamide 500mg/sqm

for FEC75 it's the same apart from
Epirubicin 75mg/sqm

well you did ask...!

lily - sorry to hear you've been feeling rough too, we'll sit in sick corner together until we feel better :)

kurri - aw, poor old lady dog :(

Thanks Betsy you and amber are very good at knowing all this stuff :)
Can I just ask you, and anyone else really how much you stay in during chemo ? Last time 1st 2 weeks I only ventured out to walk to my mums, the co op, and for my wig fitting. The last week I went everywhere, cinema, meals, shopping etc. Just wondered what other people do

Can I just say, I am very excited as there is now a emoticon!

They must have had our thread in mind when they designed that

I just noticed the in honour of helen and rushed over here to say and time

Sorry - got over excited, will now try to answer your question sensibly malt.

I would say if you feel up to it, try to carry on as normally as possible, and going out is fine. I would avoid places where there is likely to be obvious infection - anywhere where there are lots of small children with runny noses for example! - Or buses maybe, - but shopping I;d say is OK.
The thing is if your blood count gets very low (and obviously its supposed to get fairly low about 7-10 days in) you probably won;t feel up to much, I had very low WBC count - and got a lot of nasty infections, and I wasn;t actually going anywhere to pick them up because i felt too lousy, so I think if you are going to pick something up you can't really avoid it, however much of a hermit you are. The main thing is that if you feel ill/get a temp, you let your unit/cancer ward know asap - don't hum and ha just ring them. ............ .........

What emotion I can't see it maybe because I'm on my phone ?
Thanks Kurri it's hard to know what to do and what not to do. I think last cycle I was more depressed ( not sure that's the right word ) than feeling ill which was why I didn't go out much.

Its a cake emoticon malt.

I think the fact that you will feel up and down emotionally though all this, is a good reason for trying to do stuff when you feel OK - take advantage of your good days, and just hang on in there on the bad ones xx

Thanks Kurri xx
I can't see the cake but I can see the tea and wine !

Malt - about getting out:
My Chemo diary so far (not that it exists in RL). Day 1 = Chemo. OK until Day 3 late (so can go out Day 1 and Day 2), then languish largely at home until after Day 8 (don't drive during this period as I feel zonked). This makes me bored/depressed so I am glad that I perk up and I go out a bit and can go out until the next Day 3 ... in moderation!
We've planned to go away some of the best weekends - been away once so far and have booked two further weekends away. We are also planning to make more of an effort to visit some local places we've not visited in the 16 years we've lived in our current home. Next week I'm going away for 5 days.
I'm also going into work once a week in the two better weeks - would go more, but I have a long commute (2 hours each way) and am able to do some work from home.
But, and this is a big but, my DCs are grown up, so I don't have to care for them. DH is being a big help and I am spared a lot of housework, cooking etc. So perhaps, I have more energy to spend on myself.
Do try and get out, especially after the first week. It really makes a lot of difference to get back into normal life and do try and have a few treats.