A little bit of housekeeping

Two quick things: a correction and an option.

The correction: On my last post, I mentioned that the results of the PALOMA-3 with news on whether Ibrance is helpful in Overall Survival (how long people live) in addition to Progression Free Survival (how long till the cancer evolves around it and grows again) are expected to be presented at ASCO this weekend.

This is not actually true! 

It's sort of half true, but that doesn't count for much.  The actual truth is that the results of PALOMA-3 will be (or have been) presented at ASCO this weekend, but those are aren't Overall Survival (OS) for Ibrance and letrozole.  They're actually Progression Free Survival (PFS) of Ibrance and Faslodex--the results are very good, and Ibrance more than doubled PFS over Faslodex alone, from a median of  3.8 months to 9.2 months, which is, as I understand it, an almost unheard level of improvement in cancer drug development.  It's similar to the improvement found with Ibrance and letrozole over letrozole alone and all points to Ibrance being a really big deal in the treatment of hormone receptor positive metastatic breast cancer.  A huge big deal.

For me, personally, it's probably not that useful since I've already flunked out of Faslodex, but it will be big for a lot of women in the future, so that's really good news.

The study results I was thinking of about Overall Survival with Ibrance and Letrozole are actually Phase III of the PALOMA-2 trial (not phase II of the PALOMA-3 trial, but maybe you can see where I went wrong there!) are due out in October.  And I'm still anxiously awaiting those, though even more anxiously awaiting getting to the my next scans and seeing how Ibrance and Letrozole are working for me!

And the option:  I've just made a Facebook page for this blog for people who like to use Facebook to follow blogs.  If that's you, here you go!  You can go directly to www.facebook.com/mepluscancer or click the Facebook icon to the top left, and (either way) "like" the page.

If that's not you, or you just don't want to follow this one there, no worries.  And I promise this is the last I'll mention it.  And there will be no "give-aways and please, please, please like it" posts.  Because I don't like those.  And also, this is a blog about metastatic cancer so what exactly would I give away, anyhow? (Can you see it now?  300th person to like it gets an empty bottle of letrozole, 400th gets an Ativan info sheet and an empty bottle of Ibrance--whoot!)

Moving on

Edward Hopper - Compartment C Car

I got some results from the bone scan I had last week and the CT and MRI earlier this week.  My brain still looks good, but my liver and bones are starting to show signs that the cancer is evolving its way around the Faslodex.  There are some new spots on my spine and some smallish areas on my previously unaffected liver.  It's not terrible, but it's not that great, either.

I also have more kidney stones.  Because today is my day, it seems.

So, at the recommendation of my oncologist, I'm moving on to a new drug combo and last month's Faslodex was my last Faslodex.

It was expected that this day would come, and I think I still did better than average, but I was hoping I'd get a longer run of it.

But, starting tonight, I'm on to Letrozole, an aromatase inhibitor.  I'll be combining that with Ibrance, the  new drug from Pfizer that was just approved by the FDA 2 months ago.  Timing is everything.

The Ibrance will take a few weeks to get (it has to come through the mail from a speciality pharmacy) and my oncologist wants me to wait until after I get back from the first away vacation I've taken in years later this month--it should be fine, but it seems a little ironic that I had 12 mostly uneventful months on Faslodex and the one week in 3 years that I plan to get on a plane for fun, and this happens.  As I said, timing is everything.

Letrozole's side effects should be similar to Faslodex.  Ibrance brings fatigue and low blood cell counts (red and white), so that may be a little more of a challenge.  Or maybe not.

The good news is, in the clinical trials, the Ibrance/Letrozole combo had a median progression free survival of 20 months, which compares to 10 months with Letrozole alone.  Those were women who had not already failed a different hormone drug like I did on Faslodex, so it may not be as good for me, but obviously median PFS is a guideline not a promise, anyway.

I guess I'm getting better at cancer these days.  I'm sad, but for now I'm feeling like it's ok.  It's time to roll up my sleeves again and move on to this next treatment.  And fortunately I'm not out of treatments yet.

And so I move on.  And hope this next new thing will be the next new thing.  And so it goes.

A very good day

Today I got my latest scan reports:

For those of you who don't speak cancer and/or radiology (and never mind the slight/slightly thing, because that is not what matters here!), it means the cancer hasn't spread in the last 3 months and some spots even seem to be getting better--this is fabulous news!

No guarantees what the next scans will hold, of course, much less the future as a whole, but for now and most likely for the next 3-4 months, it means stay the course and feel very happy, which is exactly what I'm going to do!

Halcyon Days

Autumn Leaves - John Everett Millais, 1856

Ok, fair warning, I'm feeling very introspective today.  Thinking on the meaning of things, time, and so forth.  I had my latest dose of Faslodex last week and that always leaves me feeling moody for a few days.  Please just take this for what it is, or please just feel free to skip this one and come back in a few days when I'm back to usual again.

__________

I'm living some halcyon days right now.

By all medical measures, I'm doing so well.  As I've mentioned before, my tumor markers continue to go down, my scans seem to be stable, I'm feeling pretty good, getting in my steps (just hit the 2 million mark this past week!), and even the pains in my hips have been there through 2 stable scans which I take to mean, whether they're arthritis or nerves or something else, at least they're not cancer.  Even the drug side effects are predictable and consistent, which makes them a lot less worrisome and a lot easier to deal through.

Halcyon days, indeed.

I have to confess, I needed to google that phrase to figure how how it's supposed to be spelled.  The way it sounded in my head, I had assumed it had something to do with Helios, the sun, but it doesn't really.  It's actually from an ancient Greek story about a husband who died at sea and wife who followed in grief, untli both were transformed into sea birds, halcyons--the 7 peaceful days were a gift her father, a god, gave her each year to lay her eggs on the beach.  I learned something new there.

I don't know where I first heard the phrase "halcyon days" (or read the phrase, really), but it always reminds me of some well loved Victorian children's books or something by Tennyson.  Knowing the story behind the phrase, I like it even better.  I like the idea that it's not just a label for sunshiney pleasant days between the darker times, but something more intentional than that.  An actual gift, a grace of peace to hold on to when the harder times come.  I like that halcyon days aren't just here and gone, but rather part of a cycle that will return when the time is right again.  It's still bittersweet, but beautiful, too.

I'm never sure just how to think about these kinds of days in my life.  I can remember very clearly thinking of that phrase, halcyon days, the summer my daughter turned one.  As I was watching her grow and change so quickly, I was acutely aware that those glorious summer days of spending our time together exploring and discovering couldn't last forever.  It's a notion that I think about often, as she and my stepkids grow older.  As my husband and I do, too.  Time continually moves on and, as it does, I'm usually left questioning if each lovely thing will be back again in one form or another, or if circumstances, time, and place will never quite fall together that way again and this time will actually be the last.  And at times like those, I'm usually left wondering why there would be such a craving for consistency in an ever changing world.  I honestly don't understand what God was thinking there.

I know I don't want to waste these halcyon days--here, now--worrying about the next storm, or at least worrying about what the future might bring.  I know with the cancer, like everything else, there's no real way to know if these particular days will be over in a few months or many years.  I know what the basic odds are, but have no way of knowing where my own life will fit in to them.  But I also know I don't want to look back at these times and regret that I spent so much of them worrying about what was next.

Occasionally I do get back to the mindset I want to be in, something like Matthew 6:27, "And who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life?"  But, lets be honest, it takes a lot of effort for me to get past the feeling in my gut that if I don't worry about things, if I let my guard down and just enjoy the present, then some crazy universal all powerful karma enforcer will notice what I'm doing and punish me for it.  I know, when it's down in a sentence like that it sounds pretty crazy, right? 

I think that's part of why I really like the Greek story behind the phrase "halcyon days." I like thinking that halcyon days aren't a final peace to think back on when the inevitable troubles come but part of a continuous cycle.  That each year for a certain time, the storms will subside, the gale winds will calm and roiling waves will settle, and the halcyon bird that was once Alcyone will have a time of peace to line her nest and lay her eggs before the storms rise up again.  Every year.  Always. Like a promise.

As I sit here now, typing a blog post, listening to the sound of my daughter's keyboard as she writes an essay for school, looking at the blessing of a young woman the little imp of that summer years ago has been growing up to become, just as her brothers and sister have done, seeing the sunshine streaming in the windows of our snug little home on this chilly autum day after another summer has come and gone, I try to stay present in the blessings I have here, now.  I try and trust that it's safe to enjoy them and not worry.  And I try to remember that I've had in my life many halcyon days. There have been other times of storms and shadows, to be sure, but those, too, have been followed by different kinds of halcyon days. 

I know at some point I will reach the end of my time here, the same way the ancient Greeks did, the way the author of the book of Matthew, the Victorians, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson himself did, immortal as some of their works may be.  I like to think of Alcyone's bird children, born of those halcyon days, carrying on through life in times of storms and back again to halcyon days of their own.  Its's a cycle that includes them but neither begins nor ends with them.  It sounds a little sad, but I find it comforting, and beautiful, too.  A never ending circle of halcyon days dating back to the ancients and leading forward through the future until kingdom come.  A promise bigger than all of us, carrying forward through the ages.  And a promise, which right now, that I am very blessed to be a part of.

Of scars and bone

From Katie Thamer Treherne's lovely
The Light Princess illustrations.

When I was in high school, I used my own money to sign myself up for some adult beginner ballet lessons.  For pretty much my entire childhood I had wanted to learn ballet--never mind that the '70's and '80's were an era where the ideals of girlhood were more about sassiness and tomboys (think Paper Moon and The Bad News Bears)--underneath my '70's and '80's approved tough-stuff exterior, I longed for pink slippers and tutus so badly I could practically taste it. 

As instructed, before my classes began, I had gone to a local ballet shop and was fitted for a pair of soft pink Capezio ballet slippers.  And because it's not like I just started being a dork when I turned 40, after I brought them home, I spent a fair amount of time looking them over carefully, noticing the little pleats under the toe, the soft sheen of the fabric binding where the cord threaded through, the feel of that buttery soft, gently pink leather.  And it fascinated me that one of the slippers had a little scar in the leather, a tiny curved line healed over from a little cut where the animal must have brushed against when it had still been alive.

I was reminded of that scar again talking to my oncologist this past visit.  It turns out that our bones also scar.  With bone mets, the whole idea of NED (No Evidence of Disease) is a bit of a misnomer.  Even if my cancer were to be completely wiped away, the evidence would still be there in the sclerotic areas (abnormally dense and irregularly formed bone growth) growing in where the lytic (bone destructive) lesions had been.  Even if we were to get to a state where my bones were completely free from cancer (granted, an unreasonably lofty goal at the moment), like that little scar near the toe of my ballet slipper, my bones, in life or years after I'm gone, would always have marks that tell the tale of what has happened with me and this cancer.

The confusing thing is, as it turns out, new active mets can also be sclerotic, so sclerotic spots aren't always a sign of healing.  They can be healed bone scars or they can be the bones interacting with active cancer.  So they can be a great sign or a depressing one, depending.

So, back to those scans, the news is that I have several brand new cancer-related sclerotic spots (dense areas of abnormal bone) on my lower spine, a previously unremarked upon vertebrae, my right pelvis (along with the long-known mets there), and on my formerly thought to be clean other femur.  Most of my mets were mostly lytic (the kind where the cancer eats away at the bone), but now there are also many little sclerotic spots but in new locations.

Since new active mets can be sclerotic, the scan report included text about the new spots saying, "It is unclear if this represents response to therapy or new metastatic disease."  That's the sticking point, the newly dense mets are either a sign that the meds are working well or a sign that they're starting to stop working well.  How's that for clarity?

My oncologist, looking at all of this within context of not just my CT scans but also my bone scans (among the usual bright bone spots there were also some notably less bright than before spots--which is what my girl-detective self thought I saw) and my general cancer history, was pleased.  She believes these are healing areas of bone-destructive mets, rather that new cancerous lesions of the abnormal bone building kind.  Meaning her assessment is that things are going well and some of the cancer is dying a bit (I think that means that the new ones are assumed to have been there but not really visible when they were just missing bone and not dense built up areas, but I clearly don't have an oncologist's training or knowledge about these things).  So this was good news, but the kind of good news that sort of leaves you not quite sure if you should really celebrate or maybe that might be a bit too hasty?

The unequivocally good news was that there was still no evidence of cancer spread to my organs. That was nice.  But, despite my oncologist's assessment, the bone thing was hard to feel easy about.  I felt like I should be thrilled at a good report and celebrate, but in the back of my mind I kept thinking, "Well, but what if it is spreading and my meds aren't working any more and...."

So mostly I was happy, but also holding my breath, not quite sure if I should relax for a few months of relief (at least until the next scans) or remain a little wary.

Fortunately, a few weeks later, I received my latest tumor marker results in the mail and those are down, too, which is good.  In fact, the number is now nearly half what it is in April and actually now just a few digits above the normal range.  Mentally, that news was the confirmation I needed to breathe again.  The markers match the good news side of the scans, so it seem I really am doing well right now, or at least signs are pointing that way.

For those of you keeping track at home, I now have a mix of sclerotic and lytic mets in my skull, neck bone, mid-spine, a rib, lower-spine, all across my pelvis, and on both femurs.  But, thankfully, it seems my meds are still fighting the good fight. Way to go, meds.

____________

And, while I won't publish this post until I read it over again tomorrow, right now as I type it's Saturday, November 8, so Happy International Day of Radiology, everyone!  It's held each year on the anniversary of the day Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen discovered x-rays, which, using knowledge about them gained from Marie Curie's related work, allow us to keep tabs on my cancer and know whether or not my treatments are working without cutting me open, which I think is extremely miraculous.  Here's to you, Dr. Röntgen and Dr. Curie, well done!

Magic comes with a price

Katie Thamer Treherne - illustration from
A Little Mermaid

Yesterday was not my best day ever.

I had my Faslodex, Xgeva, Lupron last week.  I'd even been upgraded to a 3-month dose of Lupron (1 injection, more medicine, lasts 3 months before needing the next injection), so for my next 2 visits I'm down to only 3 injections (Faslodex is 2 shots per dose).  So that's cool.

But in addition to the usual bruses, aches, and soreness from the various medications, and the physical side effects that are part of their life saving action, I've been noticing for a while that in the days after I get them, there are other side effects as well.

For one thing, they mess with my sleep.  Fortunately my oncologist has other things to help with that.  But, I've also been noticing more recently that they seem to also make it harder for me to be resilient emotionally.  I find myself less able to process stressful words, actions, events, right after I get the shots.  And I don't think that's something my oncologist can help me with.  So yesterday I was feeling that.  And even understanding that there was a chemical contributor, it was still a hard day.

Have you ever noticed that in some children's books magic is treated as a free gift with no-strings-attached, while in many, many others magic always comes with a price?

Mary Poppins is the free gift kind of magic, as she comes flying in out of nowhere to add interest and adventure to the lives of the Banks children.  Even when she flys out again, there's sadness, of course, but no one is the worse for wear, and there's even the promise (in French, in the book version anyway) to return again.

But in many other books and stories, when there's magic there's a bargain to be made, be it some sort of trade, tithe or blowback right from the start, or some sort of later discovered change or enslavement that turns out to come with all that power, or the dawning realization that the power or the situations you created with your magic because you thought they would be so lovely aren't all that lovely after all.

Medicine is kind of like that, too.  Some have side effects so minor that all you really get is win, but others have short or long lists of side effects and, like magic in books, the balance comes in determining if the reason to use the magic/the condition you need to treat with the medicine is worse than the side effects themselves.

I don't really find myself regretting the side effects of my medicines.  Especially after those nice stable scans that I also found out about last week, I'm feeling pretty warm and rosy about those little injectable buggers.  But they do have their price.

It's not as bad as the price of chemo, of course, and one of the biggest reliefs of the good scans is that it means I'm not back on chemo today.  Someday I probably will be (I'm learning to accept that), but I'm plenty happy that that day is not today.  Also, the permanent side effects from my previous chemos are really, really minor and managable, so that's also good.

As I heal up from the side effects of the latest radiation and am able to comfortably go for those 10,000 steps, I don't regreat having done that, either.  It occurs to me often as I go for those walks or tend my growing garden, or even use stairs easily on a regular basis, that those were the reasons I chose to get the hip radiated and here I am doing those thing, just like I wanted! 

But yesterday I wasn't feeling so jubilant.  And lack of jubelation was snowballing.  Among other stressful things to my resilliance-free self, I had not gotten in my 10,000 steps the day before (lots of driving and people over, so not bad reasons, just reasons) and had intended to make up for the missing steps by doing more yesterday.  But the worse I felt about it, the less I was able to just get up and do it, and the more time passed when I hadn't been able to get up and do it, the worse I felt.

Finally, my husband came home from work and I was at a paultry 3000 steps.  Not, necessairly the biggest deal in life, of course, but the walking is a "medicine" whose only real unpleasant side effect is time.  And it's something my oncologist recommended.  And it could help.  And it's something I can do, I can control in as world where the cancer seems to say "I'll do whatever I damn well please and there's nothing you can do to stop me." Which we deal with using "There are some major side effects but we hope it will slow down the cancer whose major side effect is death" medicine.  So getting in the steps feels really important.

And there I was at 3000 steps, failing at something important.  And that, tacked right on to my increasingly long list of other things that weren't being dealt with, seriously stressed my lack of resilience.

The crazy good part of all this is that when my husband came home from work, he suggested we take care of that walk right then and there, just go out and do it.  So, we drove to the local track (yes, we did drive out so we could walk) and together we walked around and around and around that track until we reached the 10,000 step point.

Instead of being a death march, walking with my guy on a summer evening, with other people coming and going and doing their own thing, watching the sky turn golden pink, seeing the birds and bees flit around in the overgrown border of weeds and wildflowers, it felt precious.

And, somehow, wasting the day and pulling it through at the end, against all odds, also felt important.  More important, even, than being virtuous all day and not needing to grab the fat out of the fire would have felt.  I guess it's because life is that way a lot of the time, crappy things happen, or are said, or come up as a consequence of something else, and sometimes resilience is in very short supply.  Yesterday I was coming up short on so many things, but we were still able to make good on a bad day.  It was like, for that day, with his help, the greedy gods of cancer and the dark price of magic were unexpectedly, at the very last minute, actually appeased.

With the work accomplished, we went home.  My husband baked chocolate chip cookies and my Fitbit dashboard called me a "Champ".

And I felt a whole lot better.

Good news!

Cliff Chiang's Wonder Woman

I got my scan results today and despite the hip pain, despite my fear, my cancer is looking stable, which is excellent news!

It seems a bit strange, I suspect, to people not dealing with cancer like this, because basically my scans told them I have cancer in a number of bones, but it's the same cancer in the same bones and not cancer spreading to new places.  It's not in new bones and it's not in my organs, so that's very, very good news.  Cancer gone would be nice, but stable is the name of the game and stable I am!

I'm thanking God tonight, that's for sure!

I was thankful to get more injections and be able to continue getting the injections.  Thankful to look at the paltry number of steps I've gotten in today and plan to go out when the heat abates to try and sweat through to 10,000 steps for another day.  Thankful to set my alarm to wake up and go to work and not  have to plan to add chemo to my schedule.  Thankful to take a little Advil for the hip thing since I'm no longer wondering if I'll need to stay off blood thinners so they can insert another port for infusions.

I'm sure I'll be back to complaining soon enough, but it would really take some doing to bring me down tonight, that's for sure :)

Faslodex, you are very strange

Conceptual Faslodex in action, from AstraZeneca's video here

As I've mentioned before, one of the medicines I'm on to try and control the cancer is an injected drug called Faslodex.  It's given as 2 intramuscular injections every 2 weeks for the first 3 doses and monthly thereafter.

And it is a strange, strange drug.

For me, anyway, on the day of the injections the injection sites have this kind of cold burning pain.  About a day after that, the muscles it's injected into ache.  And after that, the bones in my hips ache.  Then the bones in my spine ache.  Then the muscles in my back ache.

And then, about a week later, after everything has settled down again and I'm feeling good, the muscles where it was injected ache, then the injection sites again have this kind of cold burning pain.  And then the bones in my hips ache. Then the bones in my spine ache.  After that, the muscles in my back start to ache.  And then....

It's certainly managable, not that terrible, and definately less painful than the pain I was having from the cancer itself before radiation zapped it away.

But it's really, really weird.

It happened with my first does and now with my second dose, too.  And last week along with the Faslodex, I also had the Lupron injected into the muscle and it brused a bit and was easily forgotten, so I'm pretty sure the issue isn't the injection and isn't the muscle, it seems to be the Faslodex itself.

From what I read online from others on the drug, not everyone has the same reactions, and for some people it's different each time.  I have another injection of it next week and after that I go a month between doses--I'm curious to see if continues and how it goes with a full month in between shots and whether it goes more smoothly with time.

Of course, in all honestly, even if it does stay exactly this way over and over for as long as I'm on it, I'm ok with it.  As long as it does what it's hoped to do in terms of slowing the cancer, Faslodex and I will be getting along just fine.

But is it very, very strange.

A short update

This is going to be a short one because I'm not feeling well today.  Earlier this week I had a sore throat, which is one possible side effect from one of the things they're giving me.  Then was sneezing and my nose started running, which seemed like allergies.  And my muscles ached, which is another possible side effect of one of the things they're giving me.

But the following day it was pretty clear that I had a nasty head cold.

Not that I thought cancer would make me immune from the rest of real life situations, but I was kind of hoping.

Instead, I took the day off from work to rest, washed my hands a lot, and was feeling better enough to go to get my next Faslodex shots on schedule (don't worry, I was very careful with handwashing and Purell and wasn't actively coughing or sneezing by that time).

When I got there, my oncologist came by to explain that some of my tests came back and I'm still feeding that cancer too much estrogen, but they do have a way to fix that and help me do a better job of starving the cancer into submission.  It's another drug (Lupron) that's (wait for it) injected monthly.

The funny thing about Lupron is it's also used for men with prostate cancer and so the package has on it this photo of a smiling older man that is, I suppose, supposed to be reassuring for older men with prostate cancer.  For younger women without prostate cancer, it's a whole lot closer to silly (with a possible side of creepy) than reassuring, in sort of a "thank you older man who's joyfully working through prostate cancer but your reassuring services are not needed here" kind of way.

Different dose of Lupron, same happy, smiling Lupron guy.

For those of you still playing cancer treatment bingo at home, we're now up to  Xgeva, Faslodex, and Lupron, all (after some loading doses) injected monthly.

I know cancer doesn't give you bonus points for effort or dedication, but I feel like I should at least get a few days off for learning what all of this stuff is and means and extra credit for knowing how to pronounce "Xgeva".

Instead, although I was feeling better the last couple of days, I think maybe the physical stress of the shots is messing with my immune system because I'm back to feeling like I have a head cold again.

But at least I can sit and rest, and as I sit and rest, I get to feel insufferably virtuous for having all that anti-cancer stuff going to work for me while I do.  And, while I'm sitting here and feeling insufferably virtuous, I also know that head colds don't really last that long, so I will rest and be insufferable for a day or two, and then get back down to business (and yes, family who is sweetly putting up with me without complaint thorough my insufferability, that's a promise).

All sorts of updates

Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen, who discovered X-Rays,
won the first Nobel prize in physics, and started the
chain of events that made my hip feel much, much better.

Yesterday I found out the clinical trial I was expecting to be in isn't going to happen after all.  The sponsoring organization is having some delays in opening it up, so it won't be enrolling until, most likely, May.  I'm not willing to wait and my oncologist isn't recommending it.  So, yesterday we moved on.

I guess the clinical trial just wasn't meant to be. I keep telling myself that if it was the right thing for me, it's what would have happened.  Goodness knows there have been enough things I found discouraging in life that later turned out to be for the best, so I guess there's no reason why this couldn't be one of them.

So instead of a consenting to the clinical trial, I got my second dose of Xgeva (as scheduled) and my first dose of Faslodex (Fulvestrant).  I need to come back in 2 weeks for my second dose, but after that it's one dose every month at the same time as the Xgeva.

In effect, it's the same as being on one of the arms of the clinical trial, the one with the drug (which would have been Faslodex anyway) and the two placebos, except that it's all the "benefits" of the placebos without needing to take placebos.  

Put that way, it sounds almost awesome, doesn't it?

Hopefully the Faslodex without the other drugs will work well, and work well for a long, long time.  It is one standard treatment for this and it can work well, even where Tamoxifen was a dismal failure (and honestly, my quick trip to mets on tamoxifen really does have to be considered a dismal failure).  I'm hoping Faslodex works beautifully for me.

Unfortunately, the Faslodex is an "intramuscular" injection, given in two shots deep into 2 big muscles.  It hurt at the time and hurt most of the evening.  I'm still sore today, but if it does the trick I'd gladly put up with that and then some.  

Fortunately the Xgeva is "subcutanious" injection, so that one goes under the skin in my upper arm.  I won't lie, it does sting, but when it's over at least it's over.

Both the Xgeva and the Faslodex have similar side effects, mostly headaches, muscle aches, and some GI stuff, but so far for me it hasn't been that bad.

Fortunately, in contrast to the moderate unpleasantness of the Faslodex and Xgeva, my radiation therapy is darn near miraculous.  

Before I started the radiation my hip was already feeling a bit better than I had been at my worst.  I don't know if that was due to being very careful to avoid using the joint more than was necessary or something unexpected with the Xgeva, but I'm glad of it.

Still, I think the radiation was a good decision.  I just can't get over how much better my hip feels each day.  From what I hear from my Radiation Oncologist, Radiation Nurse, Radiation Therapists (yes, lots of radiation people on my team), how long it takes to feel better varies considerably from person to person.  After my tamoxifen failure at the same time as the failure on my previous clinical trial, the failure to get in to this next clinical trial, the unpleasantness of all the injections, and what was generally a hard day, I'm pretty glad to have something going pretty nicely right now!

Every single day I'm noticing something better after radiation than I had the day before, which is incredibly cool.  On day 2, I was able to bend my leg to put on socks in a way that had been excruciating the day before.  On day 3, I noticed I could get into the car without having to brace myself with the good leg and fall into the seat.  Day 4, I could get out of the car like a normal person without having to twist around and flip my right leg out first and I'm a lot less aware of where my bones are and if I'm putting pressure on them.  This morning, I woke up and noticed for the first time in a long time that my hip hadn't hurt every time I rolled over to the side that bent the joint.  

And the best part is, so far I haven't had any of the side effects I was told could happen, and none I wasn't told about either.  Just plain none!

Well done, Wilhelm Röntgen and company, well done.

Tamoxifen is no longer my new best friend, but I think radiation therapy will fill that vacant spot quite nicely.

Yesterday was a long and moderately depressing day, but today is better and that's really what the goal is here.  A few tough days (if necessary) in exchange for more days in general and, with any luck, a lovely long string better days to come.