How long does recovery take?

Hi ddon, I finished chemotherapy treatment last June , I then had surgery mid July for full auxiliary clearance and started radiotherapy first week of September for 6 weeks.
I started feeling better around two weeks after chemotherapy finished, started to get some energy levels back. Don’t  be to hard on yourself, rest when your body tells you to, drink plenty of fluids and walk if and when you can.
You will start to improve soon, by the time I started Radiotherapy I was feeling pretty good.
Take care xx

Thank you for that. Loving the idea of the frozen towel as a dress. I pretty much need that already. My nights are a misery and I haven’t started the tamoxifen yet. And already living on caffeine 😩. I will keep the supplements in mind for joint pain. 

I guess it all depends on how you react to it.  I was pretty good up until the 4 week mark, then the side effects really kicked in.  You may not get many SE's at all.  Some people go quite ok on it.  Fingers crossed and toes crossed for you.

Once active treatment is done and you start on the HT you are pretty much left to muddle through on your own.  There's not much they can do really except put you on more pills like anti depressants which they say helps with the hot flushes. I never tried them.
Most of us try a multitude of supplements (none with phytoestrogens allowed grr) to try and rebalance.  I found the majority of them have little to no effect and it takes a while and a lot of money to work out what does actually do anything. You have to take them for a while to see if they are going to do anything which I found very annoying and just wasted time.

Some things I found did work.  Time also improves things but that's not helpful at the start. 

Flushes: A cool towel, (like the ones for the gym)  damp,  put in the freezer for 10 mins then wet slightly again will knock the hot flushes down pretty quick.  I slept with it draped over me at the beginning, wrapped it around my shoulders while dagging around at home and seriously considered making a dress out of the thing. lol 
A can of dove deodorant wherever you go to spray down your shirt front and back will tame them a bit while you're out.
Brain fog: Vitamin B and caffeine, lot's of it.  Read that as my breakfast was 2 double shot coffees with Berocca chasers followed  with 5 mins on the Elevate app. That combination seemed to wake my brain up early.  Crossword puzzles and find a words on a timer makes you start to think faster again as well. As does trying to remember all the words to your favourite songs. 

 I still make time for these as it helps with the losing words mid sentence and realising you can no longer spell thing.

Joint pain:  I tried almost every supplement available for this one.  The only thing that had a good effect for me was the Blackmores joint formula plus and it started working after only a few days.  Expensive, but comes on sale quite often thankfully.

Brands:  Although you get told that different brands of drugs don't or shouldn't make any difference, they absolutely do.  As soon as I changed brands the side effects were less severe.  Still there, but no where near as drastic. Wish I had of worked that out 18 months prior. Grrr

Libido: Wellll........still working on that one.

xoxoxo

 

Thank you@kezmusc. I guess I have been so looking forward to the taxol being out of my system (and terrified that there will be cancer cells that are also looking forward to the taxol being out of my system) and now I am impatient to feel better. I have a short window before the tamoxifen starts and I just want to feel like myself before it wrecks me again. 

Hey @ddon,

Recovery.....................it's an interesting thing.  You have physical recovery and emotional recovery. It's just another thing on the BC list of "it depends".
So I did 4 x 3 AC and 12 weekly taxol.  I felt pretty good the whole way through the taxol.  Hot flushes excluded. Vile things they are.
There were 4 weeks between chemo and rads.  I f good all through rads (minor burns excluded) with minimal effects from the chemo, so that was about 10 weeks since the last treatment.

Then there appears to be a strange emotional reaction to finishing treatment that's felt by a good majority.  A kind of floating in limbo wondering what to do now. That's another thing that can take a bit of working through.

For me, the next year was bloody awful with Tamoxifen and instant menopause caused by chemo. My body really rebelled against the whole situation.  I couldn't think straight for the most part and thought I would have to quit my job.  My kids made fun of me because I couldn't even keep track of a game of UNO. 
That's just me as I had a terrible time with the drug, some people do not.  There are a lot's who only have minor SE with Tamoxifen. It's a suck it and see kinda thing.

I agree with you completely.  I would dearly like my oestrogen back. You never know how much that stuff does for you until it's taken away without notice.
However, in saying all that, had I have known a few things at the start that I had to work out along the way I am sure I would have got through easier than I did. 
All the best lovely. xoxoxoxox

Hi @ddon - my last of 16 chemo sessions was 19 March. I noticed I started feeling better and stronger about 10 days later. I continued walking daily and drinking lots of water, which I think helped. I had surgery 16 April, and will start radiotherapy early June. My medical team wants to ensure there are no seromas and that my incisions are healed before rads. Best wishes.

Thank you ladies. I really hope this brain fog lifts soon . My head just feels so yuk and I find trying to think too hard about anything is difficult. Trying to help my kids with their schoolwork is near impossible. 

Hi
I had to wait 4 weeks between chemo and rads. How long recovery takes is a tougher question. Without sounding dismissive, recovery takes as long as it takes - It can depend on so many different things. I had 4 rounds taxol, cyclophosphamide as well as herceptin for 12 months. So my whole treatment period was about 15 months all up.  I thought I would start to feel better once chemo finished, and I didn't find radiation therapy all that bad, but a huge factor for me was the effects of chemo slamming me into menopause. Really bad hot flushes meant I was extremely sleep deprived. So while I improved from the taxol after about a month, the ongoing hot flushes which I still have 4 years later meant it took months more before I began to feel more normal or the 'new normal' as they like to call it. But everyone is different. My advice, just listen to your body. If you feel you need rest, then, if you can, rest. You will have good days and bad days, but overall you will get better with time. Good luck

And one and one other question - how long between chemo finishing and rads starting? My breast care nurse had told me two weeks, but I have just found out it will be 4 weeks until I start. Is this normal?