A Diet to Die For! Breast Cancer in Canada.

I don’t have too much to report or talk about these days … since I didn’t go through chemo either before or after surgery, I’m happy to report that I’m still alive thankfully.

My next mammogram is due in September … I don’t hold much faith in them since it didn’t find my 3 cm tumour last year … if it weren’t for the excrutiating pain I was in, I would likely be none the wiser sadly.

I do have interesting news I’ve been hesitating to write about … it’s sex and sexuality after breast cancer and a radical mastectomy.

My hormones seem to be going backwards … I have the same sex drive I did when I was 25! I hope that’s not indicative of passing time … meaning  I’ll reach puberty at 65  and start playing with dolls again at 80.

A friend suggested that I consider writing about sex because there may be many women who don’t feel like a “woman” after losing one or both breasts. I feel phenomenally well sexually but my self-image is still slightly skewed … that’s probably the hard part: matching how you feel with what you feel.

Any other women in a sexual conundrum? Please share your story … I can’t be the only one in overdrive

Business is so dead that I’m considering calling the local fast food places around here and see if they would hire a middle-aged woman with cancer (does this make me a minority now?) to flip their greasy burgers – Ha! The irony is that I’ve never eaten from the majority of these places. That’s right … no Burger King, no Wendy’s and I think the last time I had a Harvey’s and a McDonald’s burger I was still breaking out in pimples.

Since I’ve got nothing but time on my hands, I thought I would try to find news specific to Canada and breast cancer.

I came across an article from Science Daily this morning that seems to indicate that the type of breast cancer I have would not respond to chemotherapy.

In essence, it says:

” … studies have shown that women whose tumors have amplified HER2 derive benefit from regimens that include anthracyclines, such as epirubicin and doxorubicin, while patients whose tumors lack such alteration do not … “

– April 28, 2009. Science Daily.

It seems to indicate that breast cancers that are not hormone-related (mine is negative), chemotherapy isn’t much of a benefit.

Could it be that my instinct to forego chemotherapy may be right afterall?