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Metastatic Breast Cancer Questions about advanced metastatic breast cancer. |
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| 6/6/2012 | wife dx with her2+ with mid level aggresive type cancer with micro-cancer sentinal lymph node postive involment. treated with lumpdectomy(left breast only) --radiation one month,chemo 4rounds & 1 year herceptinforgot in 2008--cancer free by mamograms till present. we wonder--about futher treatment and testing?!! Why not mri,s etc. or more herceptin or Pertuzumab or other? Is it not possible to tx like this now_prevtion or eary stop of unknown --to increase chance of reoccurance?(fogot-shes on arimidex!(i have questions alsoon how or if any test to know if arimdex is stoping estogen to theaputic levels any test for this? I thing i asking for nen protocolss,txor a less conserative approach!! thanking you in adavance for your dedication to helping peole with cancer!! | ||
| Replied | JHU's Breast Center Reply | ||
| 6/6/2012 | You know the expression- if it aint broken don't try to fix it. Taking chemo and/or biologic targeted therapies would not be the right thing to do. you don't take antibiotics in case you might one day get an infection some day, right? and if you did, soon those antibiotics would no longer work if an infection did occur. The same applies to this. treatments cannot be repeated. for example, the chemo drugs she has had in the past cannot be used again. so drugs, which by the way are not without side effects, should be reserved IF ever needed in the future. (keep your glass and hers half full instead of half empty as right now you seem to be thinking "WHEN" her disease recurs). Arimidex is preventative treatment too by the way. Also keep in mind that most recurrences happen prior to now. she is at less risk today than she was 2 years ago, 3 years ago and certainly 4 years ago. So try to rechannel your thoughts to seeing her as a survivor, now!! and not as someone doomed to get metastatic disease in the future. we hope you both enjoy being and feeling cancer free. | ||
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