posts about my cancer journey
Today is a momentous day – my last chemo, certainly for now and hopefully for ever. It is only my fourth FAC, the drug combo that is the second phase of my treatment, following the 11 cycles of taxol. It is the last step in a 142 day, 15 treatment…
Just a quick post today to complete the story. I met with my oncologist just now, and she had reviewed the ultrasound information and was encouraged. She clearly saw the value in completing the FAC. While she conceded there was just a modest amoun…
I am writing this while waiting for my ultrasound exam, which will tell us whether the tumor is responding to FAC. If you recall, back on day 110 I described how my oncologist and I decided to move from taxol to FAC one week early, because the ult…
As promised on day 110, today I am writing about the drugs in the second phase of chemo that I am doing. FAC is a combination chemotherapy, made up of three different drugs, that can be thought of as variations on a single theme: inhibiting the co…
Happy New Year! I celebrate the start of 2013 as the year in which I will push my cancer into remission, as I complete the arc of my treatment. There is still a ways to go, but I’ll get there well before mid-year, all things being equal. The much …
A new study of the impact of long-term hormone treatment using Tamoxifen, which was presented this week as the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (www.sabcs.org), showed that 10 years was significantly better at suppressing recurrence and promoti…
I recently attended Elliot Masie’s Learning 2012 conference and had the pleasure of meeting Charles Duhigg (http://charlesduhigg.com/), a New York Times columnist and author of a fascinating book on habits, who gave a great presentation. In his bo…
As they grow up, children are supposed to be helpful to their parents, and in particular sons to their mothers. I have tried to be as helpful as I can, at a distance, to my mom who lives in Germany. Although it is not for me to judge, I hope that …
Our story has been picked up on several other sites: In the US by the Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/27/married-couple-both-diagnosed-breast… In the UK by the Daily Mail: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2239234/…
I didn’t grow up with Thanksgiving, being German and spending much of my youth in England. There were harvest festivals of course although my family did not observe these ancient celebrations of thanks for bringing in the food for the year. I have…
Entering a World of Pink 