Update from Kim

Shortly before Christmas, a friend in my cancer group lost her battle with breast cancer. She was 36, with a husband and two young boys.

Around the same time, a good friend (37 years old who used to work at The Pink Ribbon Shop) discovered a lump that was found to be invasive ductal carcinoma. Pathology showed it to be "triple negative," and she subsequently learned that it had spread to some lymph nodes and that she was BRCA-1 positive. Thankfully she is being seen at MD Anderson. She will start chemotherapy, and also take part in a clinical trial, in a couple of weeks. After chemo, she will start radiation and will eventually have a bilateral mastectomy.

In November, after a 5K run I did with my daughter, I had severe pain in my left hip to where I could hardly bear weight on that side. Of course I worried, since that was the side that I had bone metastasis to the femur. I called my doctor, who said it sounded like inflammation, and told me to take 800mg of ibuprofen, 3 times a day, around the clock for one week. I did, and felt MUCH better! This put my mind at ease ... in 2006, when I was first diagnosed with stage IV cancer, the left leg pain I had wasn't relieved with anything. Clearly, this latest pain was not related to cancer, it was simply related to my pushing myself hard running. Besides, it was my hip and not my femur.

Of course when I could hardly walk, I took some time off of my running. After getting such great results from the ibuprofen, I attempted to slowly ease back into it. But the hip pain continued, off and on, and it sometimes radiated down into the femur. I decided it would be best to completely stop running and see what happened. I would wait for my upcoming test results before resuming my running. For two months, I did no running. I felt fine. I thought that surely whatever inflammatory thing I had going on was now healed up. The week before my 6-month scans, I went for a short run, and the pain in the hip and thigh came back, right away, after that one easy run. It now seemed to be mostly in the thigh and not so much the hip. I was truly worried now. It just didn't seem right.

Still, I am well aware of the fact that I am a worrier. This is normal and understandable for cancer patients! Once you have had cancer, especially stage IV, your mind tends to think that any little ache and pain is the cancer rearing its ugly head again. My husband, Danny, always tells me how much his joints ache in the morning or after not a lot of activity. It's a fact that we are getting older, and these things happen. He tries to comfort me with this, and I try to find a balance between worrying to death about cancer and graciously accepting the changes that come with aging. Dr. Green has explained to me that due to the metastasis to the left femur, it will sometimes ache or hurt, because it's been injured. Like an old sports injury, it will never be as good as new. Additionally, some of my scans and x-rays have showed slight degenerative changes associated with simply growing older.

The other thing I thought of was that Dr. Green had recently changed my Zometa (for the bones) infusion from monthly to every three months. What if that had something to do with this? I had trained in 2008 for the January 09 half-marathon with no problems whatsoever. I was training for the 2010 half-marathon in the same manner, so I was looking for a reason why I was having problems this time around.

The time came for me to have my full day of labs, x-rays, bone scan, and CT scans. The next day was my appointment with Dr. Green to get the test results. I informed Dr. Green's nurse (whom I see for a brief interview before each appointment with the doctor) of the issue and explained as best I could the progression of it all. She asked a lot of questions and took a lot of notes.

Dr. Green came in with her usual chipper self. She began to explain that the bone scan "lit up" on the left femur, just like it did in 2006. Of course, this was not what we wanted to hear! She recommended that I have a plain x-ray of the left femur to investigate it further.

But that wasn't all! She also said that a nodule at the base of my left lung had shown slow growth over the last few CT scans, as had a lymph node deep in my chest. This just blew me away. I guess deep down I was expecting to hear that everything was fine, and I was just having a little leg pain because of running. This was obviously not the case!

Dr. Green recommended that we switch my oral medication from Femara to Aromasin. The Zolodex and Zometa will remain the same. She has always told me that the day would come when the Femara would no longer work. It wasn't a matter of if, it was a matter of when. Cancer is not curable. Already, my 3 1/2 years on Femara had far surpassed the "average time to treatment failure" of 9 months! Ok the 9 months was what I read online, but going 3 1/2 years certainly made me feel good after reading that! Dr. Green has also told us that when a patient responds well to one anti-hormone therapy, they generally respond well to others, of which there are several. So, on to drug #2!! We pray that this one works even longer than 3 1/2 years!

My sister, my family...

So glad to hear that your sister is doing well! Knowing your family history for breast cancer is so important! Self exams and yearly mammograms are so critical. Early detection is the best prevention!

> My sister Linda was diagnosed June 15th, 2004, on her 36th wedding
> anniversary with breast cancer. Not exactly the anniversary present she
> expected. Her actual diagnose was "high risk infiltrating lobular
> carcinoma of the left breast". She underwent a modified radical mastectomy
> shortly after her diagnosis, the primary tumor was 4.5 cm and the lymph
> nodes were negative. She received 4 cycles of dose dense AC followed by 4
> cycles of dose dense Taxol which she completed in October of that year.
> She was placed of adjuvant Arimidex, but could not tolerate it, so was
> then placed on Aromasin.
> Linda chose to have an implant put in as soon as her body could tolerate
> it, in the fall of 2005 she underwent surgery for adhesion's on the
> reconstructed breast. Thus far she is doing great, she just celebrated her
> 5 year anniversary of being in remission. The fact that she was diagnosed
> was quite a shock, our maternal grandmother had breast cancer in her 70's
> and we thought that was the end of breast cancer in our family. Then our
> cousin Bev, also on the maternal side of the family was diagnosed with
> breast cancer. Sadly she passed away at the age of 46, it had spread too
> far. We were terrified of Linda's outcome , the odds did not look good.
> But thus far she is doing great and I have my mammogram every year always
> praying that I won't receive the same dreaded news.