Changes....

Yes, I am officially the worst blogger in the world.  I can't believe it's been 2 months since I last posted!  DOH!

So let's get all up to speed and stuff!  Let's start with the hormones.  Yes, I know I've talked about it before, but let's do a little recap, shall we?

My oncologist gave me an rx for premarin.  As some of you know, this is a common estrogen replacement, which is short for PREgnant MAre uRINe.  Yes.  That's right folks.  Horse piss.  But not just ANY horse piss.  No, PREGNANT horse piss. I'm sure you can imagine that my first instinct is to avoid contact with horse piss (knocked up or otherwise).  Of course, I had to do my google-ing and research on it, and ethically I just couldn't bring myself to do it.  The way the medication is made is by impregnating the mares as often as possible.  Then, for the first 6 months of gestation, they're held in collection stalls, with limited movement/mobility with urine bags collecting all of the hormone filled yellow ambrosia.  Then, just before they're about to foal, they're put out to pasture, have the foals, and then knocked up again as quickly as possible.  And what happens to the babies, you might ask?  As you might not know, there is a veritable glut of horses on the market, and often times these foals end up going to slaughter.   Great.  Not only would I be swallowing distilled horse piss every day, but then I get to have visions of baby horses being murdered.

Needless to say, I don't want to go that route.  The downside is that the way my pharmacy communicated with my doctor, he declined the switch and left me having to figure out why.  I ended up having to go through my primary care doctor (gawd I love that man!), who also had trouble getting in touch w/ the oncologist, but in the end, he switched me over to the estradiol.  And since then, I haven't looked back! We started on the lowest dose, which made a huge difference, although I was still having some breakthrough hot flashes and mood changes.  But for the past week or two, I've been at the higher dose...and it's pure nirvana!!  I've had maybe 2-3 hot flashes TOTAL, and even they were pretty mild (compared to what I was having before where I thought sure my head was going to explode!)

In other news, I had my first followup with the oncologist and I'm still in remission! YAY!  I was SOOOO nervous to get checked (who looks forward  to getting a pap!?!) and I was terrified he would find something.   It's amazing how, after all these months, that even the slightest twinge puts me in freak out mode.  For the most part though, on a day to day basis, I'm really feeling great and just enjoying and loving being alive and relatively healthy (ok, yeah, I know, I need to drop a few...and when I say "few", I really mean a LOT!) lol!