Estrogen Positive

Being estrogen positive brings about a lot of things for Bobby and I to discuss and make decisions about. 

Should I take the drug Tamoxifen that blocks the effects of estrogen in premenopausal women, in turn preventing my cancer from returning?  I am only 2% estrogen positive which is very low but it’s above zero making me a candidate for the drug.  The risks are uterine cancer or blood clots.  Awesome, let’s block one cancers recurrence with the risk of a new cancer. 

I can have a hysterectomy but I’m not sure I’m ready to say we definitely do not want more kids.  The hysterectomy would remove my ovaries (which make estrogen) and the uterus (which would eliminate the risk of uterine cancer).  But if I do that I can’t have more kids.  All signs lead to no more kids for us but what if we change our minds in 2 years?  I can start the Tamoxifen now and if we decide we want more kids I can go off it to get pregnant or if we decide we definitely do not want more kids I can have a hysterectomy.  But if we’re going to decide in 2 years that we won’t have more children why not just have the hysterectomy now?  The hospital for my Stage 2 surgery said they’d give my OB privileges to perform the surgery there which is a benefit because 1 – I really like her and 2 – it’s one less surgery.

And you might ask, why does all of this matter if you had your tumor removed?  Ahh this is where cancer gets ugly.  A single cell could have escaped and could be lurking somewhere in my body waiting to catch some estrogen and grow, or divide and replicate.  We hope the chemo killed all those cells but we don’t know for sure so this is why I’m lucky to be estrogen positive.  There is additional treatment that I can have and we know the treatment is effective in preventing the cancer from coming back.  Dr Barnhill says that we got the tumor but she will never say I’m cured because we don’t know for sure that all cancer is out of my body. 

I am sure I’ve said I should have a hysterectomy in the past and I’m sure I’ve said I’m done having kids.  But now I’m wondering why, at 37, do I actually have to make these decisions???   None of it really mattered until I was told I need to decide.  I have a feeling I’ll start the drug and then we’ll decide what we want to do but being able to have my OB perform the surgery at the same time as my Stage 2 surgery would be nice so that I don’t have to have two separate surgeries.  Ahhh and we’re back to needing to make a decision.