Over the past 3 months, I’ve had really annoying issues with joint/bone pain – specifically ankle, shin, and knee. No pain medication I have been taking has managed to keep it under control and taking daily pain medication is not an ideal situation.
After meeting with my Oncologist, it was decided that most likely the pain is coming from the Zoladex implant, and the constant fluctuating pain levels were of concern.
So combined daily pain level and symptom tracking for a month to see if there was any direct correlation to timing of the implant was the first plan.
I found this cool app called Medisafe which allows you to track pain level and provides monthly/weekly/daily/hourly medication reminders too.
From the data we could see it didn’t matter if I had just had the implant, or was coming up due for it, there was no clear pattern to the pain.
Next, we needed to ascertain if the implant was working, and if it is working is it working for the full 28 days?
In NZ there is no accurate sensitive hormonal testing available (I don’t know if this is in relation to Cancer or in general) this meant we could only get a broad overview of what is going on. We used a blood test to read the oestrogen levels – I think this maybe called an E2 oestradiol?
Ideally the oestrogen levels for me should be under 50 pmol/L (for most females, depending on where you are in your cycle normal range is 100 – 3000). Now my levels were read as under 50, which is great, but there is another part to this, that is confusing. This part should be really high because my brain should be sending messages to my ovaries telling them they aren’t doing their job and to activate but this reading was normal. Look, I’m confused even reading that back, and I probably have absolutely butchered the communication of that information. The outcome was the implant is working, but not completely, it’s working enough to minimise the oestrogen in my body, keeping me from ovulating, but it’s not working well enough to keep the side effects at a consistent level, the fluctuating pain symptoms are an indicator of that.
What does all this mean?
First, I have some new stronger pain meds to try. We can bring the implant cycle from 28 days down to 21 days or I can have an oophorectomy.
An oophorectomy (oh-of-uh-REK-tuh-me) is a surgical procedure to remove one or both of your ovaries. This deprives the body of the hormones, such as oestrogen and progesterone, produced in the ovaries. If I wasn’t already in menopause this will make it happen.
For now I have decided to keep things the same, and try the new pain meds. I am going to have the blood test done again in the new year and re-access from there. This past month has been pain free, I’ve just a new implant injected this afternoon, here’s hoping the next month is pain free too.
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