Another month has swiftly gone by since I last posted on my blog. I am happy to say that slowly my life is resuming one of normalcy. Aside from fatigue I've been experiencing joint pain similar to that of arthritis so my brother has prescribed me Lodine which seems to be helping immensely except that it causes drowsiness which I'm already have trouble with. I take gabapentin for the nerve issues and the occassional vicodin when all issues hit me at once.
One new side effect that I wasn't warned about is chemo induced menopause. I really wish someone had given me a heads up on that one. I had been experiencing severe hot flashes so I made an appointment with my gynecologist who ordered an FSH blood test. Levels above 20 are menopausal. I hit 76.7 which is post menopausal. We won't know for sure until I've had 12 months of no mensus. In the meantime, I can't take HRT (hormone replacement therapy - estrogen and progesterone) because of the increased risk of breast cancer. It's not recommended for someone who's already had cancer. So I need to look into other alternatives to ease the symptoms, one of which is FATIGUE! Wow, I'm being hit with a triple whammy of fatigue! The hot flashes aren't TOO bad. They're not great, but going without HRT won't kill me. But it may kill my husband. He has to deal with my mood swings, diminished sex drive, and sleep in a bedroom that's 50 degrees so I can recover from a hot flash. I'm sure this is not what he signed up for when he married me, but he keeps saying to me, "in sickness and in health, for better or worse." Really, he's a saint.
