My Breast Cancer Journey
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Epilogue--Feb. 25, 2007 It's been a year since I last made an entry in this journal. It seems that some people may feel that I have left everyone hanging. Needless to say, I am still alive. Praise God for that. The last year has been probably the strangest one of my life. For the sake of my family's privacy, I will leave out the details of all their travails. I can, however, tell what happened to me personally. In my last entry, I mentioned that I was suffering from terrible anxiety. That subsided, and I would like to tell you how I was fortunate enough to have that happen. For several years prior to my cancer diagnosis I had taken buproprion, brand name Wellbutrin, for mild depression. Menopause can be a rather cruel time of life, and I was having some depression when I was about 47. The drug worked well for me. All my physicians were aware of my use of the drug. None of them, however, had a clue about what was causing the terrible anxiety. Thinking that I might need a larger dose of my antidepressant, I asked my family dr. for an rx for a larger dose. After taking the larger dose for a few days, the anxiety nearly put me in the hospital. That's when I put 2 and 2 together and decided that the drug was bringing on the anxiety. I immediately cut back on it, on my own. When I got in to see a psychiatrist, he concurred that Wellbutrin was undoubtedly responsible for the anxiety. Apparently, the chemo changed my body chemistry in some way that interacted with the drug. In many ways, the anxiety was the worse part of the whole breast cancer ordeal. Taking radiation was not pleasant, but, looking back, it wasn't that bad. I completed that treatment around the first week of April, 2006, after 34 treatments .After radiation, I began taking Arimidex, a drug that keeps my body from producing estrogen. |
My tumors were estrogen receptive, and this drug is supposed to diminish my chances of a recurrence. It aggravates my arthritis, but I really don't have much choice. A few months after the completion of my cancer treatments, other family members began having significant health problems of their own. I was beginning to think that we were cursed. It was very trying. Most mornings I would awaken with a horrible sense of dread. Our married daughter and her husband had moved to Austin from Michigan in May. They told us that they were going to start visiting Presybterian churchs in the area. Lee and I hadn't had a church home for about 5 years. I thought maybe we should follow suit. I found a small new church development, Presbyterian Church of Lake Travis. Although we didn't think we would know anyone there, Lee recognized a couple of people that he had known from work. It felt like home right away. When the new pastor started working there, he called me right away and offered to come and visit with us at our home. He is a nice, gentle soul. We needed his support at that time, and he gave it to us freely and lovingly. Today we are fairly active in the congregation. It has meant a lot to our recovery. And another family member has experienced vast improvement as well. When I look back on what we've been through and how far we've come since I started this journal, I am truly amazed. It has been a spiritual journey for me, and for Lee as well. I sort of had a sense that there was a spiritual aspect to what was happening to me, the full force of that recognition didn't hit me until a few months after the completion of the treatments. After all I've been through, I feel that I now have my life back. Yay!!! 1
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