Taxanes, Herceptin and brain mets

agness

Central nervous system relapse in patients with breast cancer is associated with advanced stages, with the presence of circulating occult tumor cells and with the HER2/neu status

Well this isn't nice to read but since it happened to me I guess it could happen to any of us. Remember that brain mets are on the whole still quite rare. I just want to open your eyes to the possibility.

[thanks to bestbird]

"Caution Regarding Taxanes: Central Nervous System (CNS) relapses such as brain metastasis and/or leptomeningeal metastasis are more common among breast cancer patients who are treated with a Taxane-based chemotherapy regimen. Taxane drugs include Taxol (Paclitaxel), Taxotere (Docetaxel), and Abraxane (Nab-Paclitaxel; Protein-Bound Paclitaxel). Therefore, patients who have taken, or are taking, a Taxane drug should be especially vigilant about reporting symptoms such as headaches, blurred vision, speech or cognitive difficulties, numbness, and/or dizziness to their physician."

I also posted on the HER2 boatd about this increased risk for that patient population as well. I don't know why docs don't mention this to patients.

I had dizziness, lost my balance, had symptoms of a pinched nerve, horrible headaches and they thought it was something else since I didn't have stroke symptoms. I could have done without throwing up and being unable to care for my kids -- or brain swelling that was life-threatening.

While sobering, a gal on the Mets board said that brain mets patients tended to survive longer than other types of mets, even as it is a frightening prospect.

My doctors didn't warn me of this risk and as a result I was diagnosed with a pinched nerve in my neck by my regular doctor. It was not, I had a cerebellular metastasis. I even saw my MO and RO with this neck pain in June and they weren't even slightly interested so I continued to believe it was a pinched nerve even as I got worse.

I've also heard of symptoms like change in personality, psychosis, stroke like symptoms, drooping in one side of the face or body, tingling on one side. It depends which part of the brain can be affected.

I'm optimistic that treatment will work for many others, but we can't be overly confident. They did think I was stage 4 from the start (but staged me as 3B) so my disease was less contained at the get go. Who knows how this tumor developed over the past 18 months, even as systemic therapy worked amazingly well against my HER2 disease.

I am extremely fortunate to still be here and I hope this cautionary tale protects other patients.

Ann