Things Look a Little Better After A Good Sleep

I just woke up, having made up for my loss of sleep in the night. I'm calm now. Not angry. But I'm glad I did get angry because it was the heat I needed to make me dig a little deeper into my side effect experience and find some more information ... namely that some women found relief from joint, tendon and muscle problems even after 3 and 4 months of being off Arimidex. Back to being a patient patient and sticking with my plans to bring up my level of physical activity. Erin and I have a first, formal walking date tomorrow night at the PAC (U of S). She can show me around the place and see how long and how far I can walk. And how fast.

Yesterday, except for my becoming a little depressed in the evening and then angry, was okay. For me it was mostly a breast cancer research day. I had put off doing research for a few weeks and so I had a lot of information waiting for me in my RSS feed reader. It was good to go through it. I found a couple of especially pertinent studies. One recently reported study suggests that high doses of Vitamin D (50,000 per week, which breaks down to between 7,000 and 8,000 per day ... only 3,000 or 4,000 more than I'm taking now) have been found to alleviate joint stiffness and pain in many women taking Aromatase Inhibitors, which includes Arimidex ... all without any Vitamin D toxicity reported. I'm going to ask my Naturopath and Oncologist about this possibility.

I also found a study out of France that showed a large number of women in a study group had improved tolerance after switching from one estrogen blocker to another. What was most interesting to me in the abstract was that it broke down the joint side effects into arthralgia, myalgia, arthritis, tendinitis, and polyalgic syndrome. This gives me the basis to ask doctors which of these I'm experiencing. Maybe I'm one of the unlucky ones getting all of the above! Knowing that might help me better understand how to deal with my particular difficulties. For instance, a lot of women report pain in their knees, which I have, too ... sometimes worse than others. It would be helpful to know if this pain is from the drug or from the activities I'm doing or from the way I'm moving as a result of the joint stiffness. Knowledge is good!

On the good side ... I'm getting more feeling in my big toes! They're still numb but there's some feeling, too. It especially feels strange in comparison to my little toes, which are still deeply numbed! I wish I could describe it, but I just can't. Numbness, for me, has been the hardest thing to describe, it's such a weird feeling. I think it's a very positive sign, though, that my big toes have started coming back. Nerves are knitting. I think I might book myself another pedicure sooner rather than later because I think all that foot massaging might have sped the nerve repair up a little. Just guessing.

Now ... onto more pleasant things. Yesterday afternoon Kevin and I went for a walk with Rex and Erin and stopped at Tastebuds for "coffee". It was a nice little outing. The fresh air was good. I wish I'd remembered to take my camera because there was the cutest little snowman on 8th street!

Today I skipped my planned yoga and slept instead. Wise decision. Tonight Kevin has a business dinner so I'm getting together with Carol. We haven't seen each other for a long while, so I'm really looking forward to that.

Today, too ... big excitement!! Sasktel is coming by any minute to hook us up for PVR. I think that's what it's called. It's so we can tape shows to watch later with a click of a button. I wanted this because now that we're not running around every evening watching Luke play sports, we're home a lot more and have been able to enjoy following some tv programs again. For years we just didn't bother watching much tv. Now, I don't want to make missing a tv show the reason for my not getting out to the walking track, so I'm very happy to be getting PVR. I'm told I will really like being able to watch show (without ads) whenever I choose and being able to stop or pause them at will. Without ads, we'll also be able to cut the time in front of the tube while still keeping up with some favourite shows! Sounds great!