I wasn’t planning on writing a post on this blog today but I think I must.  A breast cancer group I belong to had a post from someone who was crowd-sourcing opinions on Tamoxifen. Specifically, she was considering not taking it because it might affect her sex life.

Honey? News flash? You have or have had breast cancer and there are some new normals at least in the short term.

But to consider NOT taking a drug which is designed to reduce your risk of recurrence post-surgery and post-treatment because you fear for your sex life?

O.M.G. I am aghast. Sorry but I am.

I am almost in year 8 of 10 on Tamoxifen.

The only halt to one’s sex life is the one you impose personally. Breast cancer has a lot of inconveniences.  You adjust.  Why do you adjust? BECAUSE YOU ARE ALIVE!

Tamoxifen induces chemical menopause yes, but, that doesn’t mean your life as a vital woman is ending. It’s an adjustment. It’s lubricants needed….like most women going through menopause.

I have had hot flashes, joint pain, some insomnia, mood swings, weight gain, fatigue (which ends up was more thyroid driven which got partially fried during radiation so I am on a generic synthroid) BUT I am going to be blunt here: you’re a long time dead.

And I would do it all over again. I chose to reduce my risk of recurrence post-radiation. If I hadn’t chosen to reduce my risk of recurrence I would be playing Russian Roulette with my life. No thank you.

And NOT EVERYONE HAS SIDE EFFECTS. Truly. If someone is going to base NOT taking Tamoxifen on their sex life, well, I think that’s dumb.

Again, sorry, not trying to be unfeeling but ladies, you need to count your blessings, starting with being alive.

Your body, ultimately your choice but honey, I turn 55 tomorrow and I am not my ideal weight but I am loving my life. AND I WILL SAY IT AGAIN: I AM ALIVE.  This time in 2011 when I started this blog I did not know for sure I would be. I wanted to be, but hell I did not know. I had not had surgery or treatment.

And I did not crowd-source Tamoxifen. I went to the professionals. My doctors and my nurse navigator back then.  Seriously, May 16, 2011 was around the first time I had to think about Tamoxifen.

Tamoxifen is still one of the most effective cancer drugs out there.  Do I wish I never had to take it some days? Hell yes, like last night when my joints felt like they were on fire.  Or a couple of weeks ago when one of those lovely occasional waves of Tamoxifen mood swings struck.  A lot of people won’t talk about it or think you are weird if you do. I have struggled with this from time to time since radiation and all through the years of Tamoxifen with days that are just down.

I have to say it out loud sometimes:  I have days where I am just down. No logical reason to be down, it just is. I have had a few recently. They are awful. But I get through them.

A friend of mine who is a fellow survivor said to me recently:

I feel like they could do a better job of treating the whole person. I’m on Tamoxifen too and some days the sadness is like a rogue wave. I think people don’t like to hear about this stuff, because it makes you “weak.” The world applauds when you’re smiling and strong. Most days I have to push myself.

Yup. And I know people sometimes have a hard time reading blog posts I have written here that aren’t all cheerleader perfect. News flash, I was never a cheerleader.

Breast Cancer is a pain in the ass.  Any cancer is a pain in the ass. But seriously? Chose to live your best life.  And if you need reassurance, by all means seek it out.  But do not crowd-source your treatment. That is between you and your healthcare team. We can all as survivors tell you how we felt during different times, but every cancer is different.

You have doctors. Talk to them. Get your game plan on with them. If you have to add a therapist, do it.  No one has ever been harmed by a little mental tune-up.  But get real because breast cancer is as real and as ugly as it gets.  One day at a time. That’s how you do it.

I will close with this article a friend pointed out.  It’s pretty raw but pretty damn amazing.

Happy almost birthday to me.  Happy to be here and to be able to be opinionated. I am not and never will be Pollyanna. But I am alive. And I love my life. So there.

The New Yorker: Personal History
What Cancer Takes Away
When I got sick, I warned my friends: Don’t try to make me stop thinking about death.
By Anne BoyerApril 8, 2019

Before I got sick, I’d been making plans for a place for public weeping, hoping to install in major cities a temple where anyone who needed it could get together to cry in good company and with the proper equipment. It would be a precisely imagined architecture of sadness: gargoyles made of night sweat, moldings made of longest minutes, support beams made of I-can’t-go-on-I-must-go-on…..For months, my body’s sadness disregarded my mind’s attempts to convince me that I was O.K.

…..No one knows you have cancer until you tell them…..The cancer pavilion is a cruel democracy of appearance….The boundaries of our bodies break…..Every movie I watch now is a movie about an entire cast of people who seem not to have cancer, or, at least, this seems to me to be the plot….I am marked by cancer, and I can’t quite remember what the markers are that mark us as who we are when we are not being marked by something else.

….People with breast cancer are supposed to be ourselves as we were before, but also better and stronger and at the same time heart-wrenchingly worse. We are supposed to keep our unhappiness to ourselves but donate our courage to everyone. We are supposed to….as in “Sex and the City,” stand up with Samantha in the ballroom and throw off our wigs while a crowd of banqueting women and men roars with approval….We are supposed to be legible as patients while navigating hospitals and getting treatment, and illegible as our actual, sick selves while going to work and taking care of others. Our actual selves must now wear the false heroics of disease: every patient a celebrity survivor, smiling before the surgery and smiling after it, too. We are supposed to be feisty, sexy, snarky women, or girls, or ladies, or whatever……