worried about my mother

anastdimi

Hello everyone! My mother had a radical mastectomy in 2002, followd by chemotherapy for breast cancer stage I-II. Nine years later, she felt a pain around the chest area. The CT, bone scan and finally biopsy, revealed a recurrence in the chest wall. She had chemo (Taxotere, Avastin, Zometa) for 6 weeks and, since there was a good response, she kept having Avastin and Zometa as a maintainance therapy. But the PET scan she was scheduled to have three months after the end of chemo (it was her first PET scan), showed that the chest wall recurrence was still there, a little larger than it was initially, with some regional nodes affected too. Thankfully, there was no other sign of metastases. Now, she's going to have radiotherapy (first time), and she' ll be taking Xeloda. Does anyone have a similar story to share? Should we still be optimistic that the recurrence might go away for good? Thank you very much for reading and hopefully responding

Angelfalls

Hello Anastdimi,



My story is similar, although my first recurrence was in/behind the sternum and was treated straight away with rads. The rads got me to NED (along with an ooph and Arimidex as I'm an ER+ girl), for almost 5 years. I've since had a further recurrence in the same area and am now on Xeloda. I don't know how that's working yet - CT scan next week after 3 cycles. Fingers crossed!



Nobody can tell you how well your mother will respond to treatment. But there are so many options available that there is plenty of reason to be hopeful for stability, regression or perhaps even NED, even if there isn't a good response to one particular tx. Have a look at the Stage IV survivorship threads to see lots of reasons for us all to be hopeful.



And your mum is really lucky to have you looking out for her. Take care, Angelfalls xx