Moving on?

darCraig

I just found out that a friend has liver mets.  Another very close friend died of BC in August - lung mets.  We hear that the survival stats are improving, and are in fact much better than for a lot of other types of cancers - but the fact is that many women are still dying.

I'm not sure what I'm trying to say here.  It's scary, and I've noticed from these boards that yes, initial diagnosis matters, but some do very well with a bad diagnosis, and some who had a "good" diagnosis - low grade, no lymph node involvement - do develop mets.  So there is a lot we don't know.

I'm two years out, and life has moved on, for sure.  I can't live in cancer land - nor do I want to; but I can't have the guarantee I would like either, and bone pain, shortness of breath - any of those symptoms would send me into a panic for sure.

But in the mean time, what choice do we have but to live life as fully as possible?  Whether the diagnosis is good or bad?  I can't control all the factors that may cause a recurrance.  In some ways, I take comfort in that, 

Gitane

Ironic, isn't it, that the lack of control can be both liberating and debilitating.  I'm still trying to get my head around it.  This latest news about your friends must be very difficult.  I'm sorry.  We try to put the knowledge of how serious this is in the back of our minds and move on, but at times like these we cannot help but reflect on it again and again.  Warm hugs.

darCraig

Gitane, you said it the way I mean it - I am having a hard time getting my head around it.  When I had my bone scan when I was first diagnosed, they took xrays because of "hot spots" in my spine.  I had a very bad day waiting to hear back from the Cancer Centre.  A friend of mine, who has had major health problems with Crohn's disease, said (with tears in her voice) when I expressed my fears "but there is nothing you can do about that".  Namely what the test results would be.  So many people say "oh, don't think the worst", "it's nothing", 'you'll be fine".  But her acknowledgment that it could be "the worst", and it may have been "something", and I wouldn't be fine, strangely calmed me down - not as much as the call from the Cancer Centre, that it wasn't mets - but more than false comfort.

 We sure don't know where this road of life may take us.  My friend has lived her life and been happy in the 4 years since her diagnosis.  Wouldn't make this any better if she had spent the last 4 years worrying and looking for guarantees.

Jellydonut

Until there is a fail-proof way that a doctor can predetermine which women will benefit from treatment, and more importantly, which treatment(s) will benefit most, unfortunately, there will always be uncertainty.  It's just something we all have to learn to live with, until the time better tools are discovered.  This goes for all cancers.

Some drugs work on some people and we have an obligation to find the reason why that is.  Something tells me it has something to do with our individual DNA, but that is not yet proven.

darCraig

And I hate to say this, but it seems that what I got, and what my two friends got, was assembly line treatment.  Did I really need chemo, with a small(er) tumor, hormone positive, no nodes?  But because I was premenopausal, the protocol was that that's what I got.  And it did put me in menopause, but perhaps surgery would have been less traumatic and with fewer side effects.  One friend had a large tumor, with ALL agressive characteristics.  The surgeon insisted on a lumpectomy, she had a local recurrance with 19 positive nodes less than a year later.  She was also Her2+, but didn't get herceptin until after she had all the positve nodes - I think the horse was out of the barn.  The friend I spoke to last night had ILC, and has been on Tamoxifen for 4 years.  Now I see on another thread that Tamoxifen may not be effective on ILC.  She was menopausal BEFORE her diagnosis, but the dr. said they COULD NOT put her on an AI because she was under 50?  Does this make sense?  I wouldn't want to take an AI if I were 60 and still menstruating!  I'm not a doctor - I'm a tax specialist, and I know how mixed up people can get, and what wrong conclusions they can reach because they have only a little bit of information, and don't have the background to understand it.  But it just seems that we are not being treated as individuals - we just get what the standard of care is.