Cancer Disease Symptoms

I am 38 years old and was diagnosed with Breast Cancer 14 months ago: Invasive Ductal Carcinoma, stage 2, one positive lymph node (sentinel lymph node), ER/PR+, HER-2 -, BRCA2+. I have completed chemotherapy, had three surgeries, radiation treatment and have been to hell and back. When I was diagnosed, I was told that I could expect a difficult year to come. That's it - difficult. Not many details, and certainly no one informed me of potential side effects or complications. It has been a frustrating road, but I'm seeing a light at the end of the tunnel now, 14 months later.

I am no expert, nor am I a doctor. Just a cancer patient wanting to help others in my shoes....

I started chemotherapy about two and a half months after diagnosis (because I had surgery right away, a lumpectomy, then I had to pack up my house and move across country -- a job transfer that came about just a couple of weeks before my diagnosis). I received AC (adriamycin & cytoxan), also known as "red death" first. I was warned about the usual side effects, such as nausea, hair loss, fatigue. When they told me I would be fatigued I though, "I have two kids under 3, I KNOW FATIGUE, no big deal." I could not have been more wrong - fatigue from chemo is nothing like the fatigue of having two babies 18 months apart!

The first thing I learned around this time which I had never been told about: WEIGHT GAIN. I always thought/assumed chemo made people loose weight. After all, that's what you see in the movies, right? I had a small hope that at least if I have to go through this hell, I'd finally take off those last remaining pounds of baby weight. I could not have been more wrong. I asked my doctor why I was gaining weight. I was told that is true that weight loss is associated with most cancers -- OTHER than Breast Cancer! Great! Wham - I'm 30 pounds heavier with no clothes that fit me and a huge disgust for myself and my appearance. Do I really need to have body image issue on top of it all? No. Apparently the weight gain is from steroids that they pump into you with the chemo to help with side effects and chemo makes your body basically go into menopause - or "chemopause" as some call it - which involves a slow down of metabolism and, thus, weight gain!

Well, I survived chemotherapy, thirty pounds heavier. Next step was more surgery. Since I had my initial surgery so quickly after diagnosis because I had to pack my home to move, I results of my genetic testing had not yet been received. The results ended up being positive; I carried the BRCA2 gene mutation. This meant I had a high risk of recurrence in the same breast AND in the other breast. I was also at a high risk for developing ovarian cancer. Thus my decision, after moving and after chemotherapy, to undergo a bilateral mastectomy and reduce my risk of recurrence by 95% - 99%. I also decided that I would eventually have an Oopherectomy to remove my ovaries & tubes. That decision was a no-brainer, since Ovarian cancer is known as the "silent killer" because it's often not detected until it is late-stage. I had my two beautiful daughters and had my tubes tied after the second because I knew I didn't want more than kids. So about five weeks after chemo ended, I underwent surgery. I chose to have the bilateral mastectomy with immediate reconstruction using fat/tissue from my abdomen (tram flap). My plastic surgeon had told me that if there was any chance I would be receiving radiation therapy, he would not give me implants, so I went with the tram flap option.

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One of the present issues being addresses in clinical trials is whether anticancer drugs should be used together (cancer combination chemotherapy) or if they should be used as a single agent (sequential chemotherapy). If drugs are combined and share common toxicity such as bone marrow suppression, often the dosage must be reduced, perhaps also reducing its efficacy. Some drugs in combination may be synergistic, wherein the combination of two or more drugs enhances the anticancer effect as compared to when drugs are given alone in sequence.

Based on successful clinical trial results in the treatment of Hodgkin's disease, breast cancer chemotherapy was traditionally given in combination. Early results did demonstrate a combination of drugs were better than a single agent. As new evidence emerges regarding the presence of potentiation of these drugs and toxicities from interactions, cancer chemotherapy regimens may contain combined drugs, as well as drugs given singularly.

The other major issue for cancer specialists treating breast cancer with chemotherapy is drug dose regimen. The higher the dosage given in a fixed time period, the greater the potential toxicity and risk of adverse effects on the patient. Oftentimes, this is bone marrow toxicity, which involves a suppression of bone marrow stem cells leading to decreased white blood cell production (leucopenia), placing the patient at heightened risk for infection. Research shows that a certain dose intensity must be given to achieve the maximum antineoplastic activity, but going beyond this threshold only increases risk without further benefit.

A majority of anticancer drugs affect all dividing cells in the body. This includes both normal cancer cells. If a woman has microscopic spread of the cancer cells, these cancer cells will be replicating and be more sensitive to chemotherapy than most normal cells. Some of the body's normal cells that also replicate on a regular basis are the bone marrow cells and the lining cells of the gastrointestinal tract. It is for this reason that these normal cells are also sensitive to the anticancer drugs. Presently, there are several drugs that kill breast cancer cells and there are new agents under investigation. Much progress has been made in how to optimally administer these agents and there are supportive therapies to prevent the adverse events of chemotherapy. Several drug combinations have evolved and have been commonly used to treat women for possible metastatic disease. The standard has been one of two combinations: adriamycin and cyclophosphamide with or without 5 fluorouracil; and cyclophosphamide, methotrexate and 5 fluorouracil.

Prostate cancer causes are not fully able to be explained, but it appears that changes in the DNA of a prostate cell bring on the cancer. DNA is what makes up our genes, which in turn can control how individual cells behave under certain circumstances. We inherit DNA from our parents, and they from their ancestors. A very small percentage, around five to ten percent, it seems to be linked to these changes that are inherited.

It has also been shown to be possibly linked to certain hormones' high levels. Higher than average levels of the male hormone androgens has been shown to possibly play a part in the risk of contracting prostate cancer. Researchers have also noted that men who have a high level of a hormone known as IGF-1 are more likely to suffer from prostate cancer. But other scientists have not agreed with the finding of this link.

We can only use risk factors to help determine causes , since we don't know what exactly is the most causative factor. Various cancers will have different risk factors, and some, like smoking, can be controlled. But others, like family history or age, cannot be altered.

The presence of risk factors isn't a sure sign, either. Some people have many risk factors, but never develop cancer. At the same time, other people with no apparent risk factors, do develop cancer. The links between risk factors and prostate cancer is not fully clear.

The most important risk factor appears to be age. Your chance of developing cancer goes up most speedily after you reach fifty years of age. Nearly two of three cases occurs in men over 65 years of age.

Race appears to be another risk factor in the development of cancer. For reasons unknown, African-American men are affected more than men of other races. They are also more likely to suffer from the more advanced stages of the disease, and thus are more likely to die because of prostate cancer. In addition, prostate cancer occurs more often in non-Hispanic white men than in Hispanic/Latino and Asian-American men. The reasons for these differences in likelihood are not clearly understood.

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There is much passing reference to the need to eat more vegetables in order to avoid cancer, but beyond the urging of some health promotion staff little seems to be written in the lay press in any detail at all. In addition to this, or perhaps because of the simplistic message that is out there, many doctors do not yet recognize the importance of diet in relation both to reducing the chances of the disease occurring but also in the care of patients who have already got cancer. They do not recognize that good nutrition is a natural cancer treatment.

Many doctors are wedded to the fast effects of antibiotics. They really, really want any and every drug to be as effective as antibiotics were when they were first used. And if foods cannot give that sort of effect with the majority of people then a goodly number of them will dismiss the impact of food as being "not really important".

However there are many drugs which are not very effective. For example chemotherapy increases survival overall at the 5-year stage by only just over 2%, with it being ineffective in many cancers, despite its ongoing use. With this in mind, any "natural" activity without negative side effects should be embraced with open arms.

There are many foods which have been shown in epidemiological studies to reduce the chances of getting cancer by 25%, 50%, 75% and sometimes even more when you compare high consuming groups with low consuming groups.

There are foods which seem to prevent cells from mutating into cancer cells. There are foods which encourage mutated cells to die off. There are foods which stop the cancer cells from growing, or reduce the speed of growth and foods which stop the cancer cells from moving around the body. In biomedical words foods can be antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti-carcinogenic, anti-mutagenic, encouraging apoptosis, cytotoxic, with antimetastatic effects. Of course not all fruit and vegetables have all these effects, but they have enough to be useful.

So which are the most important vegetables and fruits? I would urge you to go for variety and not get hung up on just one or two thinking that will be enough. Plants act synergistically. That is, they work better when you eat a number of them together.