Breast Cancer Survivor
Amanda's Story
The chemo doses caused a lot of nausea, hair loss, and my feet always felt like they were burning from the inside.
There was weight gain; I always thought that when you had cancer and when you go through chemo you lose weight, but it was the opposite. It turns out it is quite common with breast cancer. They also encourage you not to lose or gain too much weight because they want to keep your meds on the same dose, but it’s kind of hard when you can’t control what’s happening. And it’s not like I was eating more, because of the intense nausea that I had.
I probably didn’t start to feel better until about a year after chemo had stopped, because I had surgery six weeks after my last dose. I also did radiation for a month.
The radiation itself wasn’t too bad – but I do know a lot of people going through the same thing who ended up getting second or third degree burns.
Everyone’s trip through cancer diagnosis and treatment is going to be different - I know people who had it worse than I did, and I know people who were going through something similar, but who did activities right after chemo, like going shopping.
I was laid out in bed all afternoon.
It’s hard to find someone who is going through similar experiences because it’s such a broad variety of symptoms that you can have.
I think the schooling program that I went through at the time was helpful, because it brought me back to my culture, our teachings, and a lot of our ceremonies.
I relied a lot on learning our language – it was kind of like a distraction, but something that was worthwhile. It was a useful distraction.
Doing a lot of sewing and beadwork, and our traditional arts – that was my main focus.
