Friday, January 24, 2014

AFTER RADIATION - Good news about those pills

Just received email from a health professional woman who also writes about breast cancer life and survival.  She assured me that the worst thing most women experience with Tamoxifen is remembering to take it!  Most encouraging thing I've been told so far.

Now my appointment with the medical oncologist is back to Feb 6.  Since I'm stuck at home with this sore throat/cough, I have dug around for more specifics on Tamoxifen side effects.

Even the National Cancer Institute (NCI) can baffle me.  They list cataracts as a side effect, but their one source didn't find any ' vision threatening ' effects in their study, which is not brand new.  The material did say women should have a baseline eye exam

One most discouraging thing from NCI is that diphenhydramine can slow or harm the effects of Tamoxifen.  This will be a problem for me, since I've taken it every night since the spine fusion to sleep soundly.

A lot of the NCI things I read today reference something called pub/med from the

US National Library of Medicine
National Institutes of Health   if  you want to venture in there.


BEFORE MY MEDICAL ONCOLOGIST VISIT

I need to pack up all my meds and my list of meds including things I too in the past

Anyway, I have some new things to print and take with me,  to get, hopefully, some answers.

I need to translate some of my notes to real questions.

AT THE VISIT

And I need to write down what he says!

Just don't let me spend too much time visiting with him and abandon my questions and fears 

CONFESSION

My research skills could use improvement.

No comments: