The bare bear with no hair

And so it begins - hair coming out this morning, glad I didn't wash may hair or it might have been a shock, even though I knew it was coming!  Did you know you lose hair from ALL OVER your body...everywhere, including the little hairs up your nose (which results in a constantly runny nose) and the hair inside your ears!  Apparently underarm and leg hair is typically the last to go....of course, the hair you really don't want hangs on longest!!  Luckily the kids are totally fine about it - well Abi is anyway - a couple of weeks ago on the way to school I commented that the trees were all losing their leaves and soon they would be bare.  Abi's retort.....'ha, Mummy, just like you, all bare, that reminds me of the story of the bare bare with no hair'  Gotta love kids :-)

I'm feeling reasonably well just crazy tired, but still not sleeping well so no surprise. I have decided to go back to work and do most of my classes next week before the next hit of chemo next Friday (can't believe it is next week again already).  I am sure I will feel better being active and taking my mind off things.

My head is getting all messed up with statistics, outcomes, survival rates, surgical options etc, etc.  It's a lot of information to learn.  Initially I was very much of the opinion I would just focus on getting through this part, the chemo and worry about the rest later.  However, I will have to make decisions about surgery fairly soon and I want to make sure I know EVERYTHING before then.  That's just me, I need to know and understand everything, I know some people would rather not know and take the lead from professionals.  But I want to know that I am doing everything I possibly can to have the best chance of living for as long as I possibly can.  I still haven't heard anything about 'receptor status' and that is playing on my mind. 

Are you ready for the science bit?  I've had lots of people tell me they find it interesting so I feel vindicated to continue, but as I've said before, feel free to skip it :-)

Receptors are like key holes on the surface of cells.  Agonists are molecules that bind to the receptor (like a key in the lock) and activate it to do something - often make a protein.  You can also get Antagonists that bind to the receptor and block it from activating.  If you did biology at secondary school, this is hopefully a familiar concept.  So, research has found that some breast cancers have receptors for certain proteins or hormones and these are thought to stimulate the growth of the cancer.  The most common one is for the hormone Oestrogen.  This is why they think people are at higher risk of BC if they have taken the Pill for a long time, started periods at an early age, menopause at a later age, never had children and never breastfed - all these things lead to an increased exposure to Oestrogen across a lifespan.  The other female hormone, Progesterone, is the other main hormone receptor found in BC.  And finally a protein called HER-2 is found in high levels in some BC's, this is a growth factor and is caused by a muted gene in the cancer cells that results in over production of this protein that in turn stimulates growth.  This is what I understand of it all, my science may well be flawed, its been 15 years since I studied biochemistry, so please don't quote me ;-)

There are various long term treatments that are taken if you have a BC that is positive for these three key things.  You may have heard of a drug called Tamoxifen - this is something that is taken long term (usually for 5 or 10 years) to block the Oestrogen in your body if you have an Oestrogen positive BC.  The idea being that this will then reduce the risk of recurrence or secondary cancers developing.  Similarly there are drugs for Progesterone positive and a drug to block production of HER-2.

Sometimes, more frequently in younger people with a BC diagnosis, the cancer is called 'Triple Negative' and in this case none of these receptors are found and nobody knows what is stimulating the cancer.  There are no back up treatments in this case, but this type does respond more positively to chemotherapy.

So there you go, more than you ever wanted to know about Breast Cancer huh?  Yeah, me too!

Enough of all that now, I am determined to put it away in a box and forget about it all for the weekend.  We are off to Plymouth tonight :-)  The boat is being launched at 8am tomorrow.  We have lots of cleaning to do on her - she is no doubt pretty mouldy and smelly as she has had a leaky hatch, bless her!  But we'll spruce her up then on Saturday we have an 8 mile journey down the Plymouth sound to take her to her home for the winter in a marina in the centre of Plymouth.  Here is a preview of Black Pearl.  I'll post loads more photos next week.