HER2- question...

HER2 negative is a good thing.  HER2 is a factor that is associated with an aggressive cancer.  If you were positive there are medications to slow the growth.  But you do not have to worry about this.  Good Luck!!

I'm HER2+ and hormone negative. In some ways it makes things easier - no agonizing about whether I needed chemo or not - recurrence without chemo is so high even with a very small tumor and negative nodes. No trying to interpret Oncotype results and wondering what to do with an intermediate Oncotype score. No dealing with side effects with 5 years of hormone therapy.

But it also meant no going without chemo. Not only is recurrence high, but a lot of the recurrences are mets. With hormone positive, node negative BC, one might skip chemo altogether if the Oncotype and other characteristics are okay.

HER2+ was a terrible thing before anthracyclines, taxanes and Herceptin. The earlier chemo drugs weren't very effective for HER2+ tumors. With anthracylines and taxanes, chemo started having as good results for HER2+ as HER2-. But the impact on the heart of a chemo with anthracycline was problem. Now that there is Herceptin, it appears that TCH chemo does as good a job as chemo with anthracycline and doesn't have the heart risk of anthracycline. Even some of the side effects usually associated with Taxotere like neuropathy were lower in the TCH group than the AC-TH. Now the outcome for a HER2+ cancer can be as good or even slightly better than a HER2- one after chemo and Herceptin.

BTW, Herceptin is too large a molecule to get through the blood brain barrier, but there are other newer targeted drugs in clinical trials that can get through to deal with brain mets.

Hi,

It was my comment that the OP  was responding to, and I apologize for any miscommunication.  I am unsure if when I said, "I hope you are HER2-" it was because the woman already had er/pr- status and I was hoping she wasn't triple-negative, or what.. It was a rather flip comment now that I think about it.

Having HER2+ is bad form of cancer with a wonderful drug to battle it.  That's what I was thinking.  Thank god for herceptin!

Sorry for confusion.  

HER2 is meant to be more aggressive which is why it is better to be HER2 neg. However, HER2 can be targetted by Herceptin, which is great. My mum has just been diagnosed with recurrent BC, same location. Mastectomy this time. She is also ER+ PR+ and was HER2 strong positive (3+) in ICH report but her FISH just came back some hours ago as NEGATIVE which I find really weird... but obviously good news. She had 14 nodes taken out 5 years ago (all clear) during her lumpectomy. She is now being offered TC chemo 4 cycles and Femara. She is weighing up options as she is really not keen on chemo again.