Side Effects

I just wanted to tell a little of my story of my run-in with "Breast Cancer" and how I've gotten through it by, "The Grace of God". I was diagnosed in December 2001, had surgery right away with reconstruction. When it first hit me that I had Breast Cancer I was devastated. I was at work and I couldn't think, the phones was ringing around me and I didn't pay any attention to them. Someone was even trying to speak to me and I didn't hear them. What I did hear was a small voice inside of me staitng that it wasn't the end of the world.

Women with early stage breast cancer who receive a newer type of radiation called intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) develop significantly fewer side effects than women who receive traditional radiation therapy, according to a study released today in the August 1 edition of the International Journal of Radiation Oncology Biology Physics, the official journal of ASTRO (American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology).

Breast cancer survivors who received both chemotherapy and radiotherapy report the most severe and prolonged fatigue, according to a study by the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida. The findings, published in the journal Cancer, provides strong evidence that women with non-metastatic breast cancer treated with adjuvant chemotherapy are at significantly greater risk for severe fatigue.

More than 10 percent of women with breast cancer stopped taking the commonly prescribed aromatase inhibitors (a type of drug designed to block the production of estrogen) because of joint and muscle pain, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center. The researchers are looking at interventions to determine how to manage the musculoskeletal side effects of these drugs. Symptoms almost always improve after stopping the drug.