Home again

We got back from the beach last Friday & we had a great time. Except for one morning, the weather was gorgeous, not too hot (low 80s) and sunny, with the occasional puffy cloud. I tried not to get too much sun but I did come home tanned :) and of course rested. Alix had a friend with her which helped allow me to vegg out a bit. Back to the real world now -- and of course my usual hours of insomnia which wind up as blog time.
How I'm feeling: pretty good overall. Some continuing pain where the port is, still have pain in fingers & toes, but bone pain has been nonexistent for about 10 days, even with the neupogen shots. So, no complaints here! And this is an extended chemo break for me, no tx until the 21st. Lisa and Karen are coming in that weekend, since apparently I'm turning 50. Oh, and by the way? 9 more days of work --tomorrow, then 2 more 4 day weeks.
I posted a week or so back on the whole question of staging of breast cancer. Well, I get these google alerts on metastatic breast cancer, and lo and behold, I find this thing in my inbox, so apparently the scientists also think BC staging needed a new approach. Glad they're doing it, sorry it wasn't available in 2006. Although, what that would have changed, I don't know. Would maybe/probably have done taxol back then, but if the cells were circulating & hadn't formed a tumor, I am not sure the taxol would have done much. I don't think they have anything that kills cancer cells before they find a home & start reproducing.
Other stuff I've been reading about that sounds promising includes a telomerase inhibitor based treatment that would tell the cancer cells it's time to stop reproducing. Telomeres, as I understand it, tell cells they've reproduced the maximum number of times. Telomerase is an enzyme made by tumors which lets them keep on going, and going..... Remember Dolly the cloned sheep -- her cells were "older" because there were less opportunities for them to reproduce before the telomeres would shut down cell reproduction. Inducing cell death, or cell suicide, is the holy grail of cancer treatment, I think.
Another thing I saw recently was that zometa, which I am on, in combination with adriamycin, which I took 2 yrs ago, is looking very promising as a front line therapy, which of course rules me out. Unfortunately, adriamycin can be pretty toxic to the heart so there's a maximum amount they will give you.