A Party and Other (Good!) News

TL; DR: We’re having a party on 10/19 from 12 – 4 pm in San Pedro, CA. Please RSVP so we can be sure to have enough to feed you and send you the location. (Please see the more details below.) We hope you can join us! Also, estrogen is amazing. Definitely recommend. Quality of life boost worth the low risk.

Hi everyone, well, first things first…we are planning a party! 🙂 (And trust me, we are SO excited about it.) We are so grateful for all of you in sharing with us and supporting us on this long journey and we want to celebrate with you and say thank you!

Please mark your calendars for Saturday, October 19th, 2024 from 12-4 pm. We will be hosting drinks (adult and non-adult), locally made wood-fired pizza, cake (Torrance Bakery of course!), possibly pasta, and other snacks and would love to see you. Vegetarian & vegan options will be available. Significant others & families welcome. We’ll be at a venue in San Pedro, CA and when you email [email protected] to RSVP we’ll send you venue and parking information (if it takes me a little while to respond, don’t hesitate to bug me via another means in case things are going to “junk” email). Please let us know if you have any dietary requests and we’ll do our best to accommodate. Please RSVP as soon as you can or NLT Sunday, October 6th. (Or text us! :))

We very much want you all to come celebrate with us if you are able!

OK, now onto the other good news. (Admittedly a bit more controversial than a party. 🙂 )

Estrogen is amazing. It took about 4-5 weeks of being on it, but I can truly say I feel more like myself than I have in 2.5 years. The physical anxiety is gone. The sleep is much better. (Not perfect, and I won’t really know until I’m fully off the sleep meds, but we’ll see…) I’m told by the doctors and the NP that the cognitive things will potentially come back as time progresses. I sure hope so! By the time I had the doctor’s appointment with the oncologist who prescribed it 5 weeks after I started taking it I was sold. It wasn’t night and day overnight like I’d expected/hoped, but it surely was over the timespan. I also read the paper that I talked about in my last post and while I’m still working through the math (and have asked a very math oriented friend to help …) I do strongly feel that the quality of life benefit is worth what I feel to be a low risk. Not all of my doctors agree and we’ll see how difficult it is to keep getting it prescribed as the ones who support this retire, but we’ll see. I’m going to go with it for now. If you are seeing any of these changes in yourself I highly recommend you talk to a hormone specialist – I had no idea how powerful these things were and I’m just so grateful to have found something that works for me that feels in alignment with what my body/brain were missing.

I have also started the insomnia clinic. So far it’s far better than trying to do CBT-I on your own. I’ve only done 2 sessions and I’m not really sure how well it’s working yet, but we’ll see. Something that’s also neat is that I’m doing it with a resident and so I get two doctors thinking and helping. I’m all for education!

I’ll be sure to let you know how the next few check-ups go. I’m praying and hoping for continued good news.

For those not in LA area, it’s sweltering hot this weekend. We’re all melting and hiding where it’s cool. For those of you here – I hope you’re staying cool!

Let me just say again how grateful we are for all of you and your support! We couldn’t have done this without you and we could not be more grateful, thank you!!

The now “standard” note at the end of posts for website navigation help:

Thank you for taking time to keep up with us and see how we’re doing as well as all the help!  Because, I think like me, much of the world does nearly everything on their phones…I’m adding this note to the end of posts to make website navigation easier if you are on a phone.  If you’d like to read other journal entries, please click here (oldest post is at the bottom of the page).  There’s also a “hamburger” menu in the top right of the webpage that can help you navigate between the journal, ways to help page, stay in touch, and welcome pages.  Please know that reading this page and thinking of us is help!   Thank you for your support in all forms! If you have any issues, please email [email protected].