Saturday, March 1st, 2025

I'm taking a break from my travel experience to catch you up on some health stuff. It's been almost 2 months since I've started Tamoxifen and some days I feel pretty icky but most days I'm just fine. In Hawaii, I felt great! Which I attribute to the beautiful weather, some vitamin D and I wasn't stuck in front of my computer for the better part of the day - more activity!

On Thursday, Feb 27, I had my first bone infusion called Zometa. It's an intravenous drug that takes about 15 minutes to fully administer. Quick and easy. If you were to look up the drug, it says it's used to reduce bone complications and bone pain caused by advanced-stage breast cancer that has spread to the bone. That's not the case for me. For me, it's to prevent bone damage, potentially from chemo. I also have other reasons why I was recommended these infusions - I have osteopenia, hypercalcemia and potentially hyperparathyroidism (had to put that testing process on hold when I found out I had breast cancer). At some point I'll need to address that too.

I woke up yesterday feeling awful. I felt like I had a terrible flu complete with body chills, amped up body pain and an all around massive fucking headache. It felt like my head was being squeezed. I forced myself out of bed to make it to my acupuncture appointment because I knew it would only help. And it did a little. I spend most of the day in bed, perked up a bit in the afternoon and fell asleep for the night pretty early on. Today, The aches are still there but MUCH better, chills are gone, and the head squeezing feeling is there but vastly improved.

These are all side effects that I knew could happen and that it would be short-lived but it still sucks. I will need to do this every 6 months for 3 years. I hope it helps my bones long term - that's the goal!