Doctor visit on 1/19 and surgery time info

Hi all,
I went to have herceptin yesterday but also to discuss a few things with Dr. Luke. One really cool thing that happened this week was that my monthly female cycle returned. I know that all of the guys reading this are thinking that they don't need to know that info, but the reason I mention it is that it is an indicator that my estrogen levels have now increased to the normal level that they were before all of this started and that may be a problem. Allow me to explain.
You see, I'm taking an estrogen blocker called tamoxifen. It's purpose is to prevent the estrogen hormones from affixing themselves to any estrogen receptors that might be present on any cancer cells that might possibly still be hanging around. So...with an elevated level of estrogen, tamoxifen may not be able to block it all effectively. I discussed a couple of options with Dr. Luke. One of the options was to take a medication called lupron, which would basically shutdown my ovaries chemically. However, there is no good data about the positive effect of combining tamoxifen and lupron. The studies actually conflict and we won't have any good data on it for a couple of years. Most oncologists who suggest lupron do so based on emotional biases. The other possibility I wondered about was removal of ovaries, but he felt that wasn't necessary and really would be too drastic of a move. After all, there are some good things about having estrogen in your body, it protects your heart, bones and joints. It all came down to thinking abut the fact that the cancer was only weakly estrogen sensitive. So, if it wasn't really fueled that much by the estrogen, I don't want to take the drastic step of taking a chemical to shutdown my ovaries and also miss out on the other beneficial effects of estrogen. Therefore, I'm just going to take Tamoxifen for the next five years as we had planned and cycle until that ultimately ends twenty years from now or whatever. I think if my case had been more advanced, I would have considered doing it. I really don't sense any urgency to do it at this point.

I'm also going to get an echocardiagram and ultrasound just to make sure my heart is doing well since some two of the three chemo drugs I took can be heart toxic. Herceptin can also be damaging, so I thought I would see if everything is doing alright. I think I'm doing fantastically, really. I mean, I'm running again and now am able to lift weights again....however, with surgery on Monday I'm sure that will change again for a little while.

Speaking of surgery on Monday, I was notified at 4:30 yesterday (Friday) that my surgery is now scheduled for around 5pm instead of the original time of 11:15. Imnot sure why I ws bumped, I hope to find out about it on Monday, but I just realized - DUH - God is in control and maybe He wants me to talk to someone or interact with a particular group of nurses or medical staff that won't be around for the earlier surgery. Who knows, maybe another patient may need encouragement. How selfish of me to get all bent out of shape about this. Jesus holds the whole world in his hands and I trust Him for the outcome. Besides, His timing has always been better than mine.
So, that's the scoop for now. If anything changes, I'll let you know. My sister will be the contact person for the first few days and she'll put some posts up to let you know how I'm doing until I can do it myself :-)
love to you all,
Trusting in Him, the author of us all,
Julie