Flares

When I came across this picture I noticed the arrow pointing to the earth. It was so tiny. And then I thought about me somewhere on that little dot. WOW! Perspective...then I thought about Cindy-Lou Who, which was pretty random, and then I thought about an ant, and finally I thought about how off-track I was getting with my subject.

In the last two weeks I have been experiencing "flares". Flares happen when you have metastatic breast cancer and you start taking hormone blocker medication. The reason you take this medicine is that most breast cancers feed on estrogen and the goal is to cut off their food supply.
Tamoxafin is an example of a hormone blocker. I am not taking tamoxafin, but I am taking Faslodex which is also a hormone blocker.
Faslodex is a bit different in that it is an injection that is given in your hip....actually both hips. "It is thick and there is a lot of it" said the nurse who was injecting me last time. I am so glad she shared that very disconcerting information with me while my pants were down.

Flares can be scary. They often cause a great deal of pain. That is what I have been experiencing in the last two weeks. Pains that makes you lie in bed in the dark of night and imagine the worst case scenario.
Then as soon as I finished compiling my list of songs I wanted played at my memorial service, the pain was gone. Then two days later it was back...hence the "flare" reference. It actually flares....repeatedly..in the places where there is active cancer.
The reason for the flare is the medicine initially acts AS an estrogen and the tumors gobble it up which really makes those cancer cells active. Then the medicine changes into an anti-estrogen and grabs the throat of the cancer cell and chokes it off....we hope...if it's doing it's job.

And now I am kinda glad that I ran across this picture this morning. Cancer looks really different now with this new perspective. A pretty powerful picture if you ask me.