should "peau d'orange" look disappear after chemo?

yan123

I wonder if peel d'orange symptom should disappear after the initiation of the chemotherapy (no surgery is done yet). My mom has gone through chemotherapy # 4 (3 AC and then switched to TCH) but "peau d'orange" look is still there. Does it mean that the response to chemotherapy is not that great?

PurpleMinion

The outward symptoms should improve, but may not completely disappear, before surgery. Does she have any other signs of improvement, like did she have redness that is now gone? Did she have a hard area of nesting or even a lump that is smaller?

yan123

Thanks for your response.

I wonder if "complete response" means that the pea d'orange look should go away too?

I am a little bit cautious about evaluation of my mom's response to chemo as she is being treated in Russia. They actually do not do any imaging to evaluate the response.They just told me that their hands feel the response better.

I asked to her do an ultrasound anyway before and after the chemo, and we noticed that a size of a lump went down by about 25%, but there is another lump, which decreased in size not as much. The swolleness and redness went down too. The doctors only tell her that it looks good in spite of the presence of pea d'orange. But I am not sure if I can trust their judgement much as they do not do imaging.

Thus, I wonder if we should expect pea d'orange to go away.

Currently they switched her to TCH (paclitaxel, carboplatinum and Herceptin) after 3 AC, but I wonder if it makes sense to ask to replace paclitaxel by taxotere if the new TCH chemo will not work perfectly well.

Thanks.