by Lisa Beach

Created on: May 08, 2009

I don't know a lot of people willing to talk about having cancer, much less its side effects. Funny, because I am one of those people, and yet I find myself sharing my experiences in writing here at Helium. Maybe it's easier because I express myself well with words; maybe it's because I can't see the look in my family's eyes, or maybe it's because feeling mortal 24/7 make me uncomfortable.

I'll admit that actual side effects from chemotherapy vary from person to person, but my largest effect was the effect being diagnosed had on other people. No one knew how to handle it: not hubby, not me, not my family. They cried, but I was stunned.

I was stunned because the way I was diagnosed was so odd, I had no symptoms, no lump; just a little breast pain I attributed to drinking too much caffeine. For no real reason other than my age, I went and had a mammogram, which ended in x-rays and a needle aspiration biopsy. Next thing I know, I'm being told I have cancer, with everything they said about me being in "doctor talk"; that's my term for them talking over my head like I was a dummy or something.

All that was back in Jan. 2007, and my entire life since then has been one giant side effect. Within a month of being diagnosed I was put on chemotherapy with 2 of the strongest drugs on the market. Looking through the pharmaceutical brochure, I realized I had almost all of the common side effects, and a couple more rare effects. First time chemo is always serious, but my reactions were extraordinarily violent.

I'm not here to scare anyone newly diagnosed, or the family of someone; I can only say how I reacted, no one else; in my entire life, extreme and/or rare things have happened to me. I have a very long list.

I had the vomiting and nausea; the disinterest in food and weight loss; the extreme fatigue and exhaustion, the dizziness and disorientation. For the rare side effects, I was hoarse and had nose bleeds. And of course, there was the hair loss.

My white blood cell count dropped, putting my immune system at risk for infection if someone near me got ill. I had to have shots for anemia and an iron deficiency, and at one point, a blood transfusion. One thing's for sure, the unusual, rare, odd things that happen to me keep me on my toes.

It's 2 years later now, and because I'm in Stage 4, I'll be on chemo forever I guess. It's those darn doctors again; I actually had to look up online some of the stuff they said about me. They wouldn't tell me what metastasized

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