Residual cancer cells and positive lymph nodes

melania

I got my path report from surgery. It's not the best result thoug, after months of neoadjuvant chemo and having been told that the tumor and 3 lymph nodes disappeared in the scan , there was still just couples of residual cells in breast ,but thank God the margins were clear, but there was still cancer in 3 lymph nodes , the biggest was 0.6 mm, i will have rads and continuing on Herceptin. Is anybody out there with similar results ? I am really worried that i still had cancer in my body even after so many months going through chemo , any thoughts??

thanks

skmarm

Dear Melania...I can understand how upsetting it would be to go through all that chemo and still have residual cancer in your lymph nodes.  I had adjuvant therapy and so I'm just hoping that the chemo I had took care of any random cancer cells beyond my nodes or throughout my body.

I'm guessing that you will have Herceptin for 12 months since you are Her2 positive and some sort of hormonal therapy for 5 years since you are ER/PR positive.  I know that it is difficult to think of any cancer as "luckier" than others, but because you have this type of cancer, you can take hormonal therapy and Herceptin - both long term therapies that will very likely handle any remaining cells in your body very easily.  Our sisters with triple negative cancer only get to have the chemo, so when cancer cells are found remaining, they have to return to the chemo (yuk).  

Rads will help, Herceptin will help and the hormonal therapy will help.  When you are done with your year of Herceptin, consider the Neraptnib trial (which is an advanced monoclonal antibody similar to Herceptin) which is an oral medication for Her2+ ladies with positive lymph nodes.  That will be yet another opportunity to nip this cancer in the bud.

 Good luck to you Melania.  I know you are discouraged, but you have more options that you can try and I know they will work for you.