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One good thing about living in Japan is the shiitake. We have them about 5 days a week in one dish or another, sometimes in a steaming pot of lightly miso based soup with enoki, shimeji, nameko and whatever other mushrooms I can find.
The vitamin Tykerb ploy was unsuccessful but my doctor appreciated my originality. The results of last Fridays heart ultrasound were fine so I'm back on Herceptin (Yay!) and plan to start (possibly biweekly) Taxotere again next week. He asked how I got along with the counselor and told me I could take my time but that I should get my preferences registered with the counsel and keep making end-of-life plans, gradually. I figure I'll go ahead and make plans now and keep updating them seeing as I may have different circumstances and preferences when I'm 90.
The lady I know here who has done alternative treatments and gone macrobiotic and survived for more than a decade after the "end-of-life" talk still sees the same doctor I do for quarterly check ups but, she confirmed, she pays 100 percent of costs for bloodwork tests because she's using complimentary medicines and then, if the markers are suspicious, the insurance kicks in for CT scans and other diagnostic testing. Sigh.
Things seem fine this week, at any rate.
Time for some more hot soup and then back to the laundry.
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Kathy S in Tokyo (44)
11/2004 partial masectomy (clear margins) - ER/PR++ HER+++
12/2004 Tamoxifen
11/2005 Clavicle & neck lymph nodes mets
30 Days rads, 7 months CEF-T Chemo
6/2006 mid chemo lung mets oral toremifene
10/2006 changed hospitals
12/2006 Tamoxifen and monthly Zoladex
2/2007 Dramatic growth of mets! Stopped Tamoxifen and Zoladex
3/2007 Began weekly Herceptin
6/2007 Added weekly Taxol to regime
4/2008 More lung mets - stopped Taxol
5/2008 Xeloda - 3 weeks on 1 week off
8/2008 Got a port!
9/2008 Stopped Xeloda, started weekly Navelbine
12/2008 Tumor progression, stopped Navelbine
1/2009 Taxotere begins again, once in every three weekly Herceptin IVs
3/2009 Added Zometa pelvic bone met, lung tumors progressing, stopped Taxotere/Herceptin
4/10/2009 Whoa seizure! 6cm&3cm brain mets. craniotomy and gamma knife surgery 5/15/2009 Started Adria/Cyto stopped 9/15 due to progession. Brain mets back 10/28 surgery more gamma soon
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