Immunotherapy and Herceptin or Kadcyla?

MissRosie

So yeah, we've reached the point where Kadcyla is no longer working well. We knew this would come, but were hoping for a bit more than a few months.

My doc and I have lightly tossed around the idea of immunotherapy as a possible Hail Mary pass. We are both reluctant, because my immune system is a donkey, spelled with an a. I had lupus when I was in my teens and a young adult, and now it's throwing up fevers as high as 104F every night like clockwork for no reason we can determine. (Yes, we've run a million tests, we've hospitalized me, put me on nuclear antibiotics, and got nothing. No result. It's just drunk, or something.) I'm not sure I trust an effort to enlist it in the fight against my cancer. For all we know, it will decide to attack something else, and all I'll do is hasten my death.

From what I can gather, immunotherapy is iffy with breast cancer anyway. Some triple-negative cancers seem to respond, but only under certain circumstances. There's one kind of miracle cure case study with a metaplastic cancer, but most people seem to agree that it was a one-off, worth studying, but not worth a lot of anticipation for a cure. An interesting approach is to combine Herceptin with an immune checkpoint blocker, but the results are preliminary and rely on the presence of other protein receptors, which I don't remember whether or not I have. My doc is reviewing my tumor's genetic analysis, to see if there's something she missed, but neither of us remember there being a lot in there to work with. There might be a study, but I'm not a normal HER2+ cancer. Who knows whether the person running the study would want someone who's more likely than usual to be a rogue data point?

I have my first appointment with an agency that does in-home palliative care and hospice, because the day when we need to switch over from one to the other is coming up fast, and they want the transition to go as smoothly as possible. I'm fine with that. I made it a year, and it was not a completely terrible year. With this cancer, that's not bad. My parents are losing their minds, but my son is very happy that hospice is on board early. When his paternal grandmother was in her final illness, her children denied her hospice care. His takeaway from that experience is that when someone you love is dying, torturing them to the bitter end to spare yourself an inevitable grief is not the answer. I am so grateful for the strength and wisdom he has that's far beyond his chronological age. Also grateful that he pre-paid for Kirby Star Allies. The end of this month is going to be a lot of fun.

I'm just wondering, if anyone else has tried it. The fact that something about the cancer is already getting a tempter tantrum out of my immune system that is doing nothing at all to even slow it down makes me think that it is probably not a good ally, but maybe doing something to further break down the cancer's defenses might help the Kadcyla do its job. I've been reading scholarly stuff, but if anyone has any actual experience with this approach, I'd love to hear it.

Tess111

Oh, Miss Rosie, I am so sorry to hear this. I don't have any new answers for you. I don't know if you are part of the her2group support forum, but perhaps someone there might have ideas.

Here is a link to their website: http://her2support.org/vbulletin/index.php

Sending gentle hugs and prayers to you.

MissRosie

Tess, thank you for the link and the hug! I'll see if anyone there has any ideas.

No one's had answers, right from the beginning, just questions and then more questions. I'm just thankful that people have been so kind.