A Day in the Life with Stage 4 Metastatic Breast Cancer

    Episode 2 - side effects no one tells you about!

Hello again - Parker here - I’m back, as promised, with more of a day in the life with stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. Today, I’d like to talk about the more peculiar side effects from one of the meds I’m taking - the super serious drug prescribed to keep my terminal cancer from becoming terminal sooner, rather than later. 

In February of 2021, I began a daily regimen of Verzenio, a wildly powerful drug shown to (for a time) inhibit the further spread of cancerous lesions. And, because most breast cancers love estrogen, I was also prescribed an aromatase inhibitor. That one is to squelch every last bit of estrogen my already post menopausal body wants to produce. I’ll talk about that one -  Letrozole - next time. Here’s my story of how I was affected by Verzenio, one of the big daddies of metastatic breast cancer.

Now, I feel compelled to tell you I’m a little bit of an over achiever when it comes to facing frightening stuff. I go all in with research. I go deep. I want that big shiny A. I strive to be ready for every medical essay exam, and horror show pop quiz they throw at me. I tell you that to let you know I WAS prepared, thank you very much, for the side effects listed in all the literature. This stuff was not covered in the course material. No, it was not.

Within two weeks of starting my new regimen, I experienced the promised gastric distress, and fatigue. No fun, but also no surprises there. What was a surprise was the sudden brain fog. I found myself absolutely unable to concentrate. I’m not talking about reading Stephen Hawking, or doing calculus, I’m talking about adding or subtracting small numbers - humiliatingly small numbers. I just couldn’t seem to ascertain what 4 plus 7 was without counting on my fingers. And then came the aphasia. 

Well, a kind of aphasia. I call it Mrs. Malapropism. Suddenly, my natural affinity for words went kablooyee. To wit, I was on the phone with a friend, and she sounded out of breath. When I asked why, she explained she was talking to me on speaker phone while perched on a ladder scraping off the popcorn ceiling in her dining room. I said, “Honey, you shouldn’t be doing that! You gotta get the pros out in their moon suits! That ceiling might be chock full of asphalt!” Long silence from friend on ladder, who finally asked, somewhat snarkily, “Asphalt, Parker?” As this was happening nearly every day now, I was irritable, and so spat, “Asbestos, and you know what I meant!” And that was just one example! The day I confused okra for cholera is one that still makes me shudder. This went on for months, and just when I thought, like Mrs. Malaprop would have phrased it, I’d reached the “pineapple of success” in word fuckery, it stopped. I’m pretty sure this was due to the Verzenio, but who the hell really knows? Next time, I’ll tell you about my strange adventure with a whole series of aromatase inhibitors, as well as to be more specific about what I euphemistically referred to as “gastric distress.”