From the first moment my wife discovered
she had breast cancer, there was a deafening silence from the men I know. Even
ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer seemed to have
received a gag order from some Central Cancer Command and did little more than
mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started
this blog…That was four years ago – as time passed, people searching for
answers stumbled across my blog and checked out what I had to say. The
following entry appeared in May of 2015.
I’ll be 58 in a
few days and like many folks my age, (besides getting the quarterly invitation
to join letter from AARP), I have aches & pains. Sore back, stiff joints,
increased fatigue after doing “regular stuff”, pre-diabetic blood sugars,
failing eyesight, fading hearing, all the kinds of things we associate with
aging.
My wife
experiences some of the same things – but there’s a twist now.
When talking about
a stiffness here or swelling there, the breast cancer survivor has the added,
“elephant in the room” – is the ache or pain caused by breast cancer resurgence
or the meds that they have been taking for years?
In other words,
are these simple aches & pains, or are they symptoms of the cancer or the
anti-cancer drugs, and urge a visit to the cancer clinic rather than the
medicine cabinet for some Tylenol? What I think of as ACHES & PAINS!!!!
It seems that
there is a certain amount of fatigue that accompanies a woman after successful
breast cancer treatment, “Fatigue is a normal response to breast cancer
treatments like chemotherapy and radiation therapy, but one-third or more of
breast cancer survivors report continued debilitating fatigue long after
treatment has ended.”
While the first resource
listed below was written before 2011, current research seems to be uncovering
even more startling information!
“Pat Christian
beat stage 3 breast cancer. But 5 years later, she's still fighting
fatigue. She says, ‘Your body is not the
same. After you go through chemo or
radiation, your body is not the same.’ That's why the 57-year old non-profit
founder volunteered for a study at Emory Medical School, to see if massage
therapy can help breast cancer survivors cope with fatigue. She was skeptical. Christian says, ‘When they told me about the
treatment, I was, like, right! I just
really didn't think it was going to make a big difference…’”
The fact is that
no one told my wife about cancer-fatigue. I’d never heard of it, either.
When we went to a
B&B several years ago, part of the package offered a massage session. We
took them up on it – my wife had the bath salt and massage, I had the hot rock
massage. It WAS fantastic!
But NOW, maybe we
need to do it again. We know all about aches & pains and now it appears
that ACHES & PAINS!!!! are real. And apparently, those ACHES &
PAINS!!!!, clinically identified as cancer-fatigue have a real cause – and a
real solution.
We’ll let you know
what happens!
[Note: Nothing
happened…cancer fatigue continues in ways that are both debilitating and
defeating. The fact is that, you just keep moving forward, doing the best you
can. The key? KEEP MOVING, NO MATTER WHAT.]
Resource: http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/cncrfatigue.htm,
http://www.myfoxatlanta.com/story/28813519/can-massage-help-breast-cancer-fatigue-emory-researchers-look-for-answers,
http://www.breastcancer.org/treatment/side_effects/fatigue
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