Resistant tumor

lali

I have triple negative cancer and as the tumor was big was given neo adjuvant - chemo before surgery - AC/Taxol - dense dose and the MRI after that shows that the tumor is probably still active. SO after my surgery will need more chemo - am very upset by the turn of events - but am glad that they are able to check if the chemo worked or not - any advice or similar experiences anyone?

liven42day

Hi lali,
God bless you. I was also recently diagnosed with IDC stage II and I am triple negative hormones. My tumor was 2.4 cm, they removed it June 5, 2007, I am having my second surgery (re-excision To get clear margins where my tumor was and lymph nodes removed) tomorrow. We discussed chemo before surgery but they opted not to. They are going to do it right after surgery. How big was your tumor?
Take care Charlene

LaurieL

I'm triple negative too. I did 2 cycles of AC and the lump didn't seem to shrink at all. I had an MRI and in fact it had grown .5 cm. Went on to have surgery then did one cycle of Taxotere which I didn't do well on. I had breathing difficulties. So I did 3 cycles of Gemzar and Cisplatin. It was one big cycle of Gemzar and Cisplatin together, the next week just Gemazar and then a week off. Then started the cycle over again for a total of 3. I finshed chemo in November, rads in January and recently celebrated 1 year from diasgnosis on 6-6-07. So far so good! I also glad I did neo adjuvant - because if I would have had surgery first and then did 6 cycles of ACT for nothing I would have been really, really uspet. Now it's just wondering if the Gemzar and Cisplatin took care of any residuals. I try to keep positive though but anxieties are always slipping through. I try and keep it to myself though... people think that since I have my hair back and done with chemo I should be back to my same ol' same ol' self....but deep down I'm not.

Best of luck. Keep us posted!
~Laurie

elf146

Lauri; I know how you feel. Deep down I am not the same either. Always a little thought in the back of my mind that it will come back.
I had chemo first and it did shrink my tumor to nothing. Had breast MRI and nothing showed, then had wide excision lumpectemy and sentinel node biopsy and no cells left. Than had radiation (33) for insurance, so feel I have done all I can. The rest is up to someone higher than me. I still worry about it.
Everyone keep up the spirits, you are a great bunch of very brave ladies. Eva

lali

The tumor was about 5 cm- it has shrunk by 1 cm now.
My oncologist says that the dense dose does take care of small cells that may have travelled to other places - hope at least that much is true as the chemo was quite rough for me - the AC part.

nosurrender

Remember that a big part of the success in getting rid of your cancer is the surgery. Once that tumor is out of your body you are way ahead of the game.
Dose dense does travel to all the parts of your body where those nasty cells want to set up shop.
You should be optimistic. Your tumor DID shrink from your tx. The surgery takes out the cancer and any follow up chemo will clean up anything left over.

I just want you to know that in September of 2001 I was dx'd with tripneg, very aggressive tumor. I have not seen hide nor hair of it again! My chemo killed off my tripneg cancer and I pray it kills off all of yours.

Good luck!

g

LaurieL

Hi Lali,
Wow, I would think a 4 cm shrinkage would be awesome. You knew it was working and what you went through was worth it. Good luck with the surgery and the remaining chemo. For me, surgury was a breeze compared to chemo. Hang in there kiddo.

~Laurie

FloridaLady

Lali, Some response is good. You can grow concern when you catch up with me. I had a 7cm tumor that I rec'd CAT Chemo 4tx and the cancer continue to grow and cover my whole breast before I could get to surgery. I than found I it spread to inflammatory. After finishing 33 rads I found it the other breast. I just had my 2nd mast. I have been in continued treatment for 18 mths. I have 7 different chemo one Phase Trial and now I going to Houston next week to see what other trial I can try. With God Blessing I do not have mets outside on the breast/chest wall area. The big factor will be how many nodes positive you had. I had 24/27 positive on both mast.

Best on luck. I hope to find new drug for you ladies in my search and trials.

cornflakegirl

I also had triple negative cancer. My tumor was large- 6 cm and I was told it was inoperable. So they put me through 8 rounds of chemo to shrink the tumor so that I could have surgery. So when it didn't shrink and continued to grow, I was kind of terrified. Despite what they told me, I did eventually have my surgery, when the tumor was 10cm. 4 of 14 nodes were positive.

I didn't have any chemo after surgery but I did do radiation. I remember being upset that they weren't going to do any more chemo even though it didn't seem to work that well for me. I felt like it was needed to kill any free-floating cancer cells after surgery, just for a little peace of mind, you know? Still, it's been almost 3 years now since my surgery and I feel great. I wish you the best.

lali

That is so encouraging! Did the pathology of the tumor show no cancer cells after the surgery? Is that why they did not give more chemo?

twink

conflakegirl...do you know how encouraging your post is for me? I was Dx'd in January...US and MRI put the tumor at approx. 3.5 cm. I thought I prefered a lumpectomy even though the surgeon started off the discussion with a bilat. mastectomy. I went through 4 DD AC, with no apparent effect on the size of the tumor although it did seem to become less dense (like it was decomposing from the inside out). I decided at that point to have the bilat. mastectomy but couldn't get it scheduled quickly enough so carried on with more chemo... 4 DD Taxotere. By the time surgery rolled around, the tumor shrunk to 2 mm. Unfortunately, I had 3 positive nodes. I will see my onc for the first time since Tx ended and I had the bilat and AND. I have been focused on trying to make an argument for more chemo (I never thought I'd say that) because the nodes were found after the chemo ended. I don't think I'm going to have radiation (according to the BS) but we'll see what the onc says tomorrow.

cornflakegirl

Lali, I don't really know why they decided no chemo after surgery. I had no insurance so I had most of my treatment at the county hospital where the docs were not very good at answering questions. I'll also say that by the time I got around to surgery I was so demoralized by the whole process that I was no longer asking too many questions. I just knew that I was in no position to make any requests or insist on further chemo. I'd hate to think that I did not get add chemo because of the insurance situation, but that could be a possibility.

After they did my pathology they figured out that I had something called metaplastic cancer. I know it is rare and usually mestasizes(sp?) to the lungs so I'm thinking they wanted me to get on to radiation to prevent that? Maybe the metaplastic is why the tumor did not shrink with chemo. It's all very confusing.

Twink, I'm really glad to hear that you got such a good responce to the additional chemo. That is wonderful! I guess that there is hope after all that if one chemo doesn't work, another might. I'm going to keep that in mind in case this ever comes back. What did your onc recommend about the radiation?

Take care everybody.

twink

Hi cornflakegirl,
My onc and BS have oth said that radiation would not be useful to me. The tumor was so small in size byt the time I had the bilat, the BS did a full axillary node dissection, so there's not much chance of any cancer cells lurking in the breast/axilla area. The onc also doesn't want to do more chemo so I've asked for a second opinion. Just working on the details of that and will hopefully know whether I have any additional treatment options available within the next few weeks.

cheekymonkey

I had neo-adjuvent chemo because of a 7 cm sized tumor. After 4 rounds of A/C, it shrunk to 2 cm. Then started on taxotere, and after two rounds, it grew back to 3 cm. so I went for mastectomy. I was downgraded from a stage 3 to a stage 2. Then I had more Gemzar and Cisplatin after a chemo assay test through the Weisenthal Center showed that I was very resistant to Taxol, Taxotere, etc. The combo of Gem/Cis was about 65% reactive to my tumor. That was the best after the A/C, so I'm still hanging on to that fact and hope that it worked, even though my recent right mastectomy showed pre-cancerous cells. I also finished with radiation.

I'm glad I did what I did, so I won't hae any regrets. My sis has had a recurrence, and she went a totally different route with her treatment. I don't know if that made any difference or not, since we both have triple negative.
I know she regrets not doing rads or having a mastectomy instead of the lumpectomy she originally had. Who knows? I just don't want to think, "What if I had done more?"

Good luck with whatever you choose..
mitzi