” I thought the worse had passed what I didn’t expect was the storm that’s brewing quietly...”- Me

The above depicts how I feel when I ended chemotherapy and embarking on my hormonal therapy.

I was thinking to myself, how bad can taking medicine daily and a monthly jab get. Man, was I wrong!

My oncologist prescribed to me a monthly jab -Lucrin and aromatase inhibitor named Aromasin. He told me that when I am on these two drugs, I will not be menstruating and will be experiencing signs of menopause like hot flashes etc.

I was thinking, ” how bad can it be. I been through worse.” The first month on the drugs, I didn’t notice any changes. When I embarked to the 2nd month, I started having hot flashes, becoming very emotional over very little things, I became so depressed I didn’t know what was happening. I had many breakdowns, I can’t concentrate on my work. It got so bad that I was always late for work. I remembered my boss sent me a message about punctuality for work, I broke down in the taxi as I read the message and I replied while crying, I am trying my best, okay! I cannot explained what was happening to me, I only know I was very sad inside.

I went online to check what I could do to improve my condition but nothing helped. In the end, I saw a programme conducted by Breast Cancer Foundation called BEEP. BEEP programme was conducted by Dr Elizabeth Nair, a renowned psychologist. It was a 6 days programme and through it, I learnt how to manage my emotions and slowly got out of my depression. I also found out about how many breast cancer survivors were affected by the hormonal therapy and some of them just gave up.

It is really a difficult journey. The physical pain caused by these two drugs is something I need to live with daily and the emotional ordeal is something that comes and goes. All I can say is I really need to trust God in my journey towards remission.