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Q: Hi - I just found your site this morning - I was disappointed that I missed the live chat last night - I have been diagnosed with StageIIB Breast cancer -
Hi - I'm sorry you missed our live chat, too! Well, I'll be doing it again October 27, so mark your calendar - I'll look forward to chatting with you then.
It's natural to be scared of chemo - all of us who had it were, before we started. It's no picnic, but it does make a huge difference in survival rates - particularly with a triple-negative diagnosis. My opinion is you'd be putting yourself in a pretty dangerous spot by refusing chemo. You MIGHT luck out, and not have a recurrence; but your chances of avoiding a recurrence would be severely compromised, if we're to believe all the scientific data out there.
Tough decision, for sure. How much risk do you want to put yourself in, vs. how scared are you of chemo, and how much do you want to avoid it? Make sure you have the statistics from your oncologist (chemo, vs. no chemo, for your particular diagnosis); look at them hard, and understand them (tell him you want absolute risk, not relative risk); then make your decision. And DON'T LOOK BACK. No recriminations, whichever way you go. You will have made the decision that's right for you; what your heart told you to do at the time.
Best of luck. And stay in touch here, OK? We can help. PJH
The chemos your doctor is recommending are the same ones I had. You will lose your hair, and you may have some other side effects. Some people seem to breeze through chemo, but most people will have a few of the many possible side effects, fatigue being one of the most common. No one has them all, but your doctors have let you know about everything that could go wrong just in case. There are many more ways to reduce the side effects than in years past, so don't let a nightmare story about someone's experience with chemo years ago frighten you.
The reason your doctors want you to have the chemo is because they have no way of knowing if some cancer cells got past that positive lymph node, and chemo is the best way they have of killing cancer cells that may have escaped the breast and lymph nodes. Hormonal drugs like Tamoxifen can effectively fight the ER positive tumor, but not the triple negative one. If it turns out that you have too many side effects from chemo, you could decide to stop it. However, if you decide not to try it, and then you find out that the cancer has spread to a vital organ, you may have waited too long for treatment to be effective.
I wish you the best as you continue your treatment.
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