Appointment with the oncologist

I saw the oncologist this morning. She said that it takes Femara at least three months to start working, and of course I've been taking the Femara for exactly that long. She felt that we should give the Femara a real chance to work. So we're going to wait two more months while taking the Femara and see what happens. We're not going to do any scans on my left femur because even if there were something there, that wouldn't change the decision to wait two months to see what happens.

She seems to think that the pain I have is flare-up pain; that the biopsies combined with the treatments have made the tumours in my sternum inflamed, and that the pain should lessen soon. She said that it's very normal to have flare-up pain when Femara starts to work, and that she's heard of women having flare-up pain for three months.

If I still have a lot of pain and/or my tumour markers don't go down after two months, then we'll look at another treatment. My CA 15-3 tumour marker actually dropped from August (58.8) to October (48), which surprised me, although 48 is still above normal. So that marker would need to be 48 or lower in two months.

She was actually happy about the bone scan results, because she said that the scans get worse before they get better. And she said that I did the right thing by calling them when I did. I feel a bit better about calling even though the scans didn't show anything.

So overall the appointment went well. I'm happy with the outcome; I wasn't prepared to wait three months to see if this would work, but two is a good compromise. Plus that means that I won't have switched treatments before I go to Las Vegas :) And who knows - maybe the pain really will go away and I'll have a more normal, stable life on Femara for a while.

Later on during curling, I wore my pink shirt and used my new pink curling broom. Apparently they were a very attractive combination when I fell. Yep, I fell on the ice tonight - it doesn't happen very often. Reports are that I bounced; what happened is that is slipped on my slider foot, fell on my knee, and then fell again on my shoulder. I didn't fall on my head, thank goodness. I have a goose-egg on my left knee, and I pulled my right shoulder a bit. We'll see how stiff I really am tomorrow, of course. Silly me :) I'm fine, though, really. I was a bit shook up after falling, but I'm fine. :)