Self-discovery through Triple Negative Cancer

  When diagnosed with cancer all you focus on is getting through it the best you can and fighting it into remission. Before I began the fight I was relatively healthy and had no signs or symptoms of even having cancer. It is such a big learning curve when going through the journey of cancer. I didn’t realise the extent of damage that the chemotherapy has on your mind and body. There is such a huge array of side effects from chemotherapy that can be short and long lasting.  I managed to get through the rough AC Dose dense drugs reasonably unscathed. Then I went onto paclitaxel and things took an unwanted turn as I experienced the side effect of Chemotherapy Induced Peripheral Neuropathy (CIPN).  So what is CIPN?  Cancer Council of Australia (2020) informs that Chemotherapy Induced Peripheral Neuropathy is damage to the peripheral nerves. These are the nerves located away from the centre of the body, such as in the hands and feet. Unlike other cells in the body, nerve ...

My first experience with Taxol dose dense treatment follows two months of AC dose dense treatment and was certainly something to write about. Obviously everyone’s experience is different and I can only reflect on my experience with the drug.  Dose dense basically means that I receive the chemotherapy drugs with less time between treatments than standard chemotherapy which allows the drugs to interrupt the rapid growth phase of the tumour cells.  There has been a fair bit of research completed on the benefits of dose dense and one article in particular grabbed my attention. It is called ‘Dose Dense-Intensive Chemotherapy Improves Survival in Early Stage Breast Cancer.’ (Cancerconnect, 2020).  A couple of stats within this article state that: Overall survival was improved by nearly 30% among the women treated with dose-dense chemotherapy. At 10 years, survival for women with hormone-negative breast cancer (cancer that is not stimulated to grow from exposure to female hormon...

Today I lost my hair, but gained inner strength knowing that chemo is fighting bloody hard to fight this cancer inside of me. The chemo attacks rapid cell growth which includes hair and skin cells. So knowing that the chemo is making my hair fall out means knowing that it is attacking the triple negative cancer in my breast.  I didn’t know what to expect when they said you will lose your hair. Do I just wake up with no hair, does it come out in clumps?? So I have journaled the process to show you what you can expect if you have chemo and lose your hair.  This was me before chemo, blonde curly hair. I started chemo 19 days ago so I managed to keep my hair for 19 days. It started to fall out slowly at first at around day 6 and then each day it significantly got more and more strands of hair coming out. On day 9 my head felt tender like it was sunburnt and was lacking nutrients, feeling like straw so I decided to give myself a little hair cut to freshen it back up somewhat. ...