Nancy Brennan

Feel Like Yourself Again

If you’re on an aromatase inhibitor and your body feels like it belongs to an elderly woman, I need you to read this. Because I have watched too many women beat breast cancer just to spend the next ten years in pain — if they make it that far. I have been an oncology nurse for 22 years. I have sat with thousands of women after their treatment ended and their oncologist handed them the prescription. Anastrozole. Letrozole. Exemestane. One pill, every morning, for five to ten years. I am the one in the room when they come back six months later and tell me they can’t close their hands. I am the one they cry to when the stairs become impossible. I am the one who hears “I don’t know how much longer I can do this” and charts it and moves on. I have watched the pain build in women who did everything right. I have watched some of them quit. I know what happened after. For 22 years I understood it was not my place to say anything. I am a nurse. I chart. I assist. I do not question the prescription. Then my sister was diagnosed. I had already watched what was coming for her hundreds of times. But there were two women in particular I have never been able to forget. The first was a woman named Margaret. She was 59 when I met her. She walked into her first follow-up like she walked into everything — fast, handbag over one shoulder, signed the intake form without slowing down. A year later she couldn't hold the pen. Two years later her husband carried everything and she gripped the doorframe to get into the exam room. Three years later she came in a wheelchair. Her scans were perfect. The cancer was gone. She looked at me and said, "I beat it. So why does it feel like I lost?" The thing about Margaret is she never quit. She took the pill every single morning and it took her body anyway. Ruth was different. She was 57. She had been coming in every six months for three years, and every time she sat down she made the same joke — "still here, still hurting." She said it like she was laughing. She was not laughing. Every visit the joke got quieter. The last time I saw her she did not make it at all. She sat in the chair and stared at the wall. When I was taking her blood pressure she said, almost to herself, "I don't think I can keep doing this." I asked her what she meant. She said, “The pill. I would rather take my chances.” She picked up her purse and said “see you in six months” the way you say it when you do not mean it. Six months later her name came up on the schedule. She did not come in. I waited a week. Then I called the number on her file. Her husband answered. He was quiet for a long time. Then he said, “Ruth passed in March.” I sat at the nurse’s station for a long time after I hung up. Two roads. Stay on the pill and lose your body. Quit the pill and lose your life. I watched woman after woman stand at that crossroads. And not once in 22 years did I see anyone offer them a third option. I want to tell you what happened the day it stopped being someone else’s chart. My sister Karen was diagnosed at 61. ER+. She came to our practice. I was there for every appointment, every scan, every conversation with the doctor. I watched her fight the way she does everything — loud, stubborn, refusing to let anyone see her cry. The day she rang the bell the whole floor clapped. She grabbed my arm in the hallway after and said, "I'm hosting Thanksgiving this year. Nobody's taking that from me." Three weeks later Dr. Regan slid the letrozole prescription across the desk. I was standing behind my sister in that room. I have stood in that exact spot thousands of times and watched thousands of women receive that same piece of paper. I said nothing. The pain started at month four. She mentioned it on a phone call — her hands were stiff in the mornings. I recognized it before she finished the sentence. By month six she stopped calling me from the kitchen. She used to cook while we talked. Now she called from the couch because standing hurt too much. By month eight I noticed she had stopped wearing her ring. Her fingers were too swollen. She didn't mention it. I didn't ask. Thanksgiving came. She hosted. She had been talking about it since the day she rang the bell. The turkey was perfect. The whole family was there. After dinner I watched her try to stand from the table. Both hands flat on the edge. Arms shaking. She pushed and nothing happened. She tried again. Her daughter reached for her elbow and Karen pulled her arm away and said, "I'm fine." She was not fine. Everyone at the table looked at their plates. I did not look at my plate. I was looking at my sister and seeing Margaret. I was not going to chart this one. That night I could not sleep. I was in bed thinking about Karen's hands on the edge of the table. About her arms shaking. About the way her daughter reached for her and she pulled away. And I thought about every woman I had watched take that same road for 22 years, and how not once had anyone in that building offered them anything but an NSAID and a reminder to stay active. I picked up my phone at 11 PM and called Dr. Linda Pace. She had been the attending oncologist at our practice for 16 years before she retired. She was the only doctor I ever worked with who did not brush past the joint pain conversation. Everyone else said "common side effect" and moved on. Dr. Pace would pause. She would ask the patient to show her their hands. She would write something in the chart that I never saw anyone else write. I always wondered why she retired early. She was 60. She never said. She picked up on the third ring. She did not sound surprised to hear from me. I told her about Karen. The bell. The Thanksgiving table. The hands. She was quiet for a moment. Then she said, "I've been waiting for someone from that office to call me." I asked her what she meant. She said, "You've been in the room for this for 22 years. You know what happens to those women. But do you know why?" I told her I knew the drug stripped estrogen and that was what caused the pain. She said, "That's what everyone says. That's half of it. Let me give you the other half." She said, "Every time you climb a flight of stairs, open a jar, or land hard on a step — your joints take micro-damage. Inflammation. It accumulates over decades in every joint you have. Everyone walking around right now has it. Most people never know." She let that sit. She said, "So ask yourself — if that inflammation has been building in every joint for decades, why didn't your sister feel it before the pill?" I didn't answer. I already knew. She said, "Estrogen. It was clearing that inflammation before it ever accumulated. Flushing it out. Keeping the joints clean. Running quietly in the background her entire life. She never felt a thing because estrogen never let it reach her." "But when a woman loses her estrogen — which is your sister now — that process stops. The inflammation is still building every time she moves. But nothing is clearing it anymore. It sits. It builds. And it starts eating through the cartilage." She said, "Think of it like an apple. You cut it in half. The skin was the protection — it kept the flesh from breaking down. The second the skin is gone, the flesh starts browning. Not because anything was added. Because the protection was removed. That browning is what is happening inside every joint your sister has. Since the day she started the pill." She paused. "The hands that won't open. The knees that lock. The woman who came in walking and left in a wheelchair. That's the apple after the skin came off. Month after month. Year after year. And nothing anyone has given those women — not the Naproxen, not the Celebrex, not the stretching, not the exercise — has ever touched the browning. They've been treating the pain. The browning kept going underneath." I was quiet. She said, "But you can't put the estrogen back. The estrogen feeds the cancer. That is the whole point of the drug. So the obvious answer is the one answer she cannot use." I asked her what to look for instead. She said, "Something that stops the browning without putting the skin back on." “And you found it?” I asked. She said, "There is a compound that does this. A plant produces them for exactly the same reason — to protect its own tissue from breaking down. They’re called anthocyanins. They’re the pigment that makes certain fruits that deep red. A tart cherry makes them to keep its own flesh from oxidizing. That is its entire purpose in nature." She said, "Anthocyanins calm the exact inflammation that rises when estrogen drops. Completely different pathway. They never touch estrogen. They never interfere with the aromatase inhibitor. Her hormone levels stay exactly where the drug put them." The browning stops. The skin stays off. There was a third option. There had been one this whole time. I asked her what to buy. She said, "Tart cherry. That's where anthocyanins come from. The clinical research is on a standardized tart cherry extract." I got off the phone and I did the obvious thing. I went on Amazon. I typed in tart cherry extract. Thousands of results. I picked the one with the most reviews. Five stars. Organic. The label said tart cherry extract. A bigger dose than the others. It looked right. I drove it to Karen's house that weekend. I told her what Dr. Pace had told me — the estrogen, the browning, the anthocyanins, all of it. She started taking it the next morning. Six weeks. Nothing changed. Her hands were the same. Her knees were the same. The mornings were the same. She called me on a Tuesday and said, "It's not working." She said it the way Ruth used to say "still here, still hurting." Like she was almost done hoping. I called Dr. Pace back. "What brand did you buy?" I told her. "Pull up the label. Tell me if it says how it was processed." It didn't. "That's the problem." She said if I was going to give Karen a tart cherry that actually did the job, three things had to be true, and almost nothing on a supplement shelf hits all of them. One. It had to be cold processed. Anthocyanins are fragile. Most tart cherry supplements are spray-dried at over 200 degrees to turn them into powder. That heat destroys the anthocyanins before the capsule is ever sealed. So even when the label says 1000 milligrams of tart cherry, the compound that does the work is dead by the time you swallow it. If the processing involved heat, the medicine is gone. Two. It had to be a standardized extract, not raw powder. Raw powder is just dried cherries ground up. No standardization. No way to know how many anthocyanins are actually in the capsule. The clinical research that moved inflammation markers used a standardized extract at thirty-six hundred milligrams with a guaranteed amount of anthocyanins in every dose. Raw powder is not the same thing. The label says tart cherry. The dose is a guess. Three. It had to be third-party tested. An outside lab confirming what is actually in the bottle. Not the company testing itself. An independent lab with published results. If that is not on the label, you are trusting the marketing. "What you bought off Amazon was spray-dried powder with no standardization and no third-party verification. Your sister has been swallowing dead cherries for six weeks." I asked her if there was one that hit all three. She said, "There is one I have been recommending. It is the only one I have found that does." She gave me the name. Senaria. Tart cherry extract. Thirty-six hundred milligrams per serving. Cold processed. Standardized. Third-party tested. Two capsules daily. I ordered it that night. It arrived four days later. I drove it to Karen's house that Saturday. She looked at the bottle and looked at me and said, "I already tried this." I said, "You tried dead cherries. This is different." She started taking it the next day. Two capsules with breakfast. The first week, she called me on a Thursday. She said the mornings were different. Not gone. Different. She said she made it to the bathroom without holding the wall for the first time in months. She did not trust it. I told her not to trust it yet. By week two she was making coffee again. Standing at the counter. She called me and said her hands had closed around the mug without her thinking about it. She had not been able to do that since the summer. By week four she called me crying. She said she had gone up the stairs in her house without the railing. She had not done that in over a year. She said she stood at the top and did not move because she could not believe what had just happened. Week six. I went to visit her. She answered the front door standing straight. No doorframe. No brace. She walked me into the kitchen and she was already cooking. Something was on the stove and she was chopping with both hands. Week ten. Karen came in for her regular appointment. Scans clear. Same as always. But when she got up to leave, Dr. Regan looked at her and said, "You're moving differently. What changed?" Karen looked at me. I looked at the floor. She told her. Dr. Regan asked for the name of the product. It has been five months now. Karen still takes her letrozole every morning. She has not missed a day. Her oncologist has not changed a thing about her treatment. She hosted Easter this year. She cooked for six hours. She stood the entire time. After dinner she got up from the table without bracing. She is still on the pill. The browning has stopped. The skin stayed off. I am writing this because I watched Margaret lose her body in that chair. I am writing this because I called Ruth's husband and he told me she was gone. I am writing this because for 22 years I charted it and went home and said nothing. I am not saying nothing anymore. If you survived breast cancer and you are on the hormone blocker and your body is browning from the inside — your hands, your knees, your mornings, your stairs — the skin has been pulled off the apple. That is what the drug does. It had to come off. It is keeping you alive. But the browning does not have to keep going. There is something that stops it without putting the skin back on. The drug keeps doing its job. The browning stops doing its damage. Two roads is not the only choice. There is a third. Senaria. Tart cherry extract. Thirty-six hundred milligrams per serving. Cold processed so the anthocyanins are alive. Standardized so the clinical dose is guaranteed. Third-party tested so an outside lab confirms what is in the bottle. Two capsules daily. They back it with a full 90 day money back guarantee. If nothing changes, you send it back and you get every dollar back. No questions. In 22 years working in oncology, I have never seen a pharmaceutical company offer to give your money back if their drug doesn't work. Not once. I watched my sister go from gripping the table to hosting dinner on her feet. I watched the woman I thought I was going to lose become the woman I recognized again. Nobody should have to choose between the pill and the body they live in. https://trysenaria.com/products/organic-tart-cherry-extract-capsules P.S. About the 90-day guarantee. I know some of you have been burned by companies that promise a refund and then make it impossible. Dr. Pace told me and it has turned out to be true. You call or email Senaria inside 90 days from when your order arrived, you send the bottle back, they refund your money. That is it. There is no gauntlet. There is no chatbot maze. I ordered Karen's second bottle before she finished the first one and neither of us plans to be sending anything back. But it is worth knowing you have that door. P.P.S. I have quietly mentioned Senaria to eleven of my patients on aromatase inhibitors since Karen's transformation. I did not make a big thing of it. I just said, "There is something I want you to look into." Seven of them followed through. One woman who had been on anastrozole for six years told me she put her wedding ring back on for the first time since her third month on the drug. Another one came in for her appointment and walked past the chair she usually gripped on the way in. She did not even notice. I noticed. If you are reading this and you have your own Karen — a sister, a mother, a friend who is on the pill and disappearing inside her own body — send this to her. And if you are the woman in that body, the one doing the math every morning on whether you can keep going, this is what I was never allowed to say from behind my clipboard. You do not have to choose. There is a third option. P.P.P.S. If you go looking for tart cherry on your own, here is what I wish someone had told me before I wasted six weeks on the Amazon bottle. If the label does not say how it was processed, assume it was heated. Heated anthocyanins are dead anthocyanins. You are swallowing a capsule of nothing. If it does not say "standardized" with a guaranteed amount of anthocyanins per dose, you have no idea how much active compound is inside. You could take it for a year and never reach the dose that moved the needle in the research. And if there is no third-party testing from an outside lab, you are trusting the company to tell the truth about its own product. Senaria is the only one I have found that passes all three. That is why Dr. Pace recommended it. That is why I gave it to my sister. That is why it worked. https://trysenaria.com/products/organic-tart-cherry-extract-capsules