Mom's recurrence/stage IV

FirstEdition

Hello everyone, I have been following this website casually for a few months and finally decided to register, for my Mom's sake an, I admit, partially for my own also. Briefly, my Mom's story: She had masectomies in 1996 and 97 respectively, adriam/cytoxan with the first one, has done fine since then(other than lymphadema in left arm), until this June she started getting winded and having trouble breathing, went to hospital, scans showed fluid around heart and lungs. We thought it was a complication from her aortic valve replacement surgery the year before, but lo and behold the fluid had breast cancer cells in it. She ended up having a pericardiocentisis and thorocentesis to drain the fluid, and had to have one more thorocentesis before the taxol/carbo kicked in and has been doing real well on it for 12 weekly doses. Just today though she was having some faint signs of the old symptoms again, and her ankles are trying to swell a bit. I live with her and am very involved in her care and she leans heavily on me sometimes(and vice versa). We had scans last week and see the onc tomorrow, supposed to do 6 more doses of chemo probably. But does fluid buildup mean the chemo has quit working? That is the natural fear...she is triple negative also which limits her treatment options we know. So far at least the ct scans show know lesions or lymph node involvement and bone scan looked clean also. I'm almost afraid to post that for fear of jinxing scan results tomorrow! My mom's name is Lavon. Bless you all, thanks, Rod.

iodine

Hi Rod, wow, sounds like ya'll make a great team!

I'll have to refer to you your doc for that question, I did't have chemo, but I wanted you to know that we are listening, even if we don't have ans. for you.

Come back and let us know what the doc says. 

FirstEdition

Hi there, I posted on another thread that ct scan showed no fluid around lungs and tumor markers were down...something looked a little fishy below left kidney, but won't know more til ultrasound, so no sense in worrying about that yet! We started back up with the chemo, and so far she's been tolerating it well. Have a great Thanksgiving all, Rod.