[AlaskaAngel]

People get so panicked with the word "cancer" that it is hard to get a genuine handle on it before they find themselves doing treatment for it. An especially "invisible" thing about doing treatment is understanding and realizing that "doing chemotherapy" isn't limited to just the chemo drugs, but includes all the support drugs and imaging and chemo-induced anemia, etc. All of that is not "simple" stuff, but complicated. For example, using some of the antibiotics (the fluoroquinalones) to deal with infections (and sometimes the mostly imaginary "potential" infections that are based on such things as indefinite spots on x-rays) in conjunction with using steroids around that same time, can bring about some things like tendinitis. And being seen and treated in multiple facilities by multiple providers can make awareness of these various factors more limited when trying to keep an eye out for them as a matter of caution. Such things easily get attributed to the following drugs instead, such as the anti-estrogen therapies. It is very difficult to keep it all cleanly managed and separated.

Added:

Part of what happens as a result is that because the percentage of early stage bc that gets any benefit from the treatment is so low, that the unforseen consequences are not taken into consideration by even the providers, who minimize them. So to me, it is even MORE important for those of us who are not "biased" by never having been diagnosed with cancer personally, to openly talk about it all, to let others have a way to take a more balanced view before they find themselves in the midst of treatment that is, as Hopeful said, risk management.