Oih! That wasn’t explained very well!

<a href="https://patricia2urquhart.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/image1.jpg“><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1020" src="https://patricia2urquhart.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/image1.jpg?w=225” alt=”image” width=”225″ height=”300″ /> Tum te tum, Thursday, the day before I see the consultant for my biopsy results. On days such as these I keep gently active and try not to think too much about tomorrow. It is though, a time when I reflect back on what has happened, so many things, but today I was ruminating over one particular aspect of the treatment. When you are having chemo, or any other invasive procedure, it’s a big deal, everyone appreciates that. How ever sometimes the potency and destructive powers of the little things are overlooked. As you probably know now the cancer I was diagnosed with is HER2 positive and oestrogen positive. The herceptin was set to work on the HER2, and in January I was stated on an innocuous looking white tablet called Letrozole. You are told it can make your muscles and joints sore, give you osteoporosis, and cause vaginal dryness, bla bla, after the horrendous side effects the chemo caused what could a little pill do? All was fine for the first four weeks, then gradually I began to stiffen up, hand knees ankles…everything. Then horror of horrors (could my children please stop reading here) I lost my vagina. Now there is a bloody big difference between dryness, and shrivelled up and gone! If you say something will cause dry skin on your face, you don’t expect to turn into an unrecognisable prune in a month. Things were not looking good, no boobs and now no doohah! I was speaking on another matter to one of the oncology nurses, and managed to slip into the conversation ” By the way I seem to have lost my vagina”, well, there is really not any other way to say it, is there? She just nodded sagely and said “ahh..that will be the hormone treatment”. I explained my “problem” and she held her hand up and made it quickly into a fist with a shlooping sound “that can happen, with most people it is very gradual” My “ladybits” had shrivelled up in a month! Oh! for fecks sake, how much do I want to be “most people”? All was not lost however, and I was to visit my G.P. ask for this and that (you don’t need the details!) and all I was assured would be well. Having now carried out a fair bit of research I am a bit more reassured. My hormone tablet has been changed with good effect, I no longer groan like a ninety year old on rising from the chair, and I can turn over in bed without waking everyone with my groans. Let the unshrivelling commence. Also according to one lady who suffered similar symptoms, she now claims to have the vagina of a sixteen year old, Joe is living in hope. The lesson learned is just because it is small, unobtrusive and easy to take does not mean it is not wreaking havoc with your body. You gotta laugh