TAMOXIFEN - TWO MORE DAYS

Tonight and tomorrow.  Then dispose of the rest of the Tamoxifen.

A certain anxiety around having no scheduled appointment with my onco for a year!  A head nurse in the infusion dept. looked so happy as she said quietly, "You don't have to come back for a year!" She doesn't get to say that often to any patient in there.  I should do a gratitude dance about this.

Took melatonin again last night - afraid to take my old standby gabapentin with it, since I need to wake enough to get up several times a night for the bathroom.  This is complicated.

Have I really made my home and my days ready for life without Tamoxifen?

  The light-proof b.r. window covering is showing its age, leaking light on the Texas pre-7-am sun mornings.  Once I get a safer step stool and a good tack hammer I might be able to do some curtain fixes.  Right now I'm not venturing out to buy tools or anything but food - not until I get a measles shot.

Earlier in the week:
Only spent one night with Melatonin.  Woke even oftener than usual.  Then took Tylenol to sleep.

As I've been digging around on line, I see some sites and big organizations are not as convinced as I am  about the Tulane Study conviction on melatonin with sleeping in the dark..  Some sites refer to "very early" studies, etc.  But several do advise sleeping in darkness. As I will.

Then Friday, I can start watching for signs that the Oncologist was right--that I may "be better without it."

I wish you health.

Remember, do not buy any medicines without consulting your doctor.

PART 3 WINDING DOWN tamox HOPE during and after.

What will I do for hope, comfort, protection after these last few days of Tamoxifen?   

A year or so ago, a Tulane U press release landed on my screen. And in my life. Reaching for Delete key (who are these people, anyway??)  I saw the name of the stuff that helps me resist BC tumors- Tamoxifen.  And I kept reading. 

It was about a study in  CANCER RESEARCH.   Tulane U  Circadian Cancer Biology Group had wondered

when Tamoxifen could work, and 

what could stop that work.  

Specifically if Tamoxifen can keep away BC tumors while we sleep, and if not, what might interfere?

THEY  put breast cancer tumors into some rats. First they tried rotating sleep periods of light and darkness for the rats.

Then, later, during the dark phases,  they gave rats a night-light, faint but enough to suppress melatonin. Melatonin when alone allowed growth of tumors.

The press release summed it up:

Tamoxifen caused dramatic regression...with

1  high levels of melatonin during complete darkness" or
2 with melatonin supplementation during dim light at night 

BUT
 "When lights are on and melatonin is suppressed, these breast cancer cells "wake up" and ignore Tamoxifen. 

So, what can I do with "high levels of melatonin (some added and some produced by my body in sleep) plus TOTAL DARKNESS FOR SLEEP?

I have more questions about this, but I knew I had to sleep with NO light to keep my body producing melatonin.  ( What about warnings I get not to take melatonin every night forever') 

My plan:

1. My daughter brought over some dark felt and made a pretty curtain to cover my  floor-to ceiling venetian blinds window.

2.   I got some melatonin. I have taken it at times in the past.    So maybe, I will even add some melatonin in case morning light defeats the felt curtain, and I need more sleep.

3. I even removed the kitchen night-light,

4. and finally shut the bedroom door tight. to keep out light from adjoining rooms.

Once, my boss's client announced

  her bedroom curtains must provide absolute darkness!
She had the money, and she got her wish

 That client was onto the wave of the future.

Now more and more people and groups advise sleeping in darkness. 

I wish you health.

Remember:  Do not buy any medicine without consulting your doctor.

LEAVING TAMOXIFEN ...2/14

So, this last month of Tamoxifen is half over.  Developments:

My oncologist, at that last appointment when he was so hurried, ordered a chest Xray. He didn't even say why.  I think it was the follow-up after my mammo, which the mammo group urges for patients who have dense breasts. So I had the Xray Jan.10. 

It is now March.   The radiologist ( a stranger) has been paid by someone, and I owe a small amount for "not covered."

Yesterday, Feb.13, I had no more patience, called the hospital imaging dept..  They didn't seem to know about it.  (Actually I had a chance or two, years ago when I worked at CAP, to learn that hospital filing systems are not always systems.)  I got someone to look.  He called back an hour and a half later; said he found it and sent it to my doctor's office.

I called the doctor's office, finally got the desk that receives those results.  Then I had to talk her into getting someone to read the results right then.  Gold star to me for not losing my temper.    Finally the nurse read the results (since when do nurses do this?) and said it looks normal.



Yesterday had been a pile of paper to sort long before the x-ray fun.  I left the apartment for a few minutes.  When I came back, some sweet person had left me a candy cane on the door.  Changed my mood in a hurry (and I don't even eat candy.) 

PS  In my first days of Tamoxifen, before the dose was cut in half, I could never had handled a day like yesterday.  May the doctor who cut the dose have dozens of valentines!

You comments are welcome here or.

 @mlsfleming2.

LEAVING TAMOXIFEN

Today I will take the first pill of my last month of Tamoxifen.

The doctor was in a serious hurry at my last appointment.  He made nervous gestures and seemed to illustrate that I would be scared without these pills that may have kept me disease free for five years.

And I admit I wondered once or twice if I would feel vulnerable...unprotected.

Then he said something I never expected:  "You may be better."

Yes, I'd had lots of aches and pains at first. But not as many as a friend who was taking aromatase pills.   And I did have such "chemo-brain that I forgot half my physical therapy appointments. 
But I'd had a busy year with lumbar fusion, moving across the country, and so on. 

And I felt like a normal person, and my pains had almost disappeared after he cut my dose in half--from 20 to 10 mg. 

 Will I be wondering every morning when I wake up, how February will be? 
Or will I dare to believe I will feel even better?   We'll see.