Is the 5 Year Mark a Milestone?

Not if you are ER positive according to presentation I heard at YSC conference. I've also known other ER + women to reoccur 10 years out. I find this information very stressful.

Your greastest chance is in he first 2 years. I think it's like 70% of those tht will reoccur it will be in the first 2 years after treatment ends. With that said your chances go down but yes the chance is always there. With that said.... If we go 10 years there will be atleast a controller. I think the predicition right now is 8 years but there is always hope of a sooner discovery. That is what happened with testicular cancer-literally overnight they had the cure for even stage 4.

Interesting. I will be seeing my oncologist next week, and I will be asking her about this. Her take should be even more interesting as she is a bc survivor herself.

Jennifer

It depends on what you mean as a milestone.  A 5 year  milestone doesn't mean it can't come back, same as 10 year milestone.

Here is documentation about a locoregional recurrance after 40 years.  She was treated initially by a modified radical mastectomy with no adjunctive therapy. Of course, they didn't do hormone or HER2+ receptor testing 40 years ago. It doesn't talk about her node status in the abstract. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14627268  They point out in the abstract this is the longest recurrance under these circumstances they can find in the literature.

But, I certainly agree with Madalyn-if you have a more aggressive cancer, **if** it was to recurr, it would tend to recurr earlier.

There are different goalposts of certainty.  We could be killed by a meteor, but we don't count on that.  Some of us (specifically me) need more help with dealing with uncertainty than others. But we can only take care of ourselves the best we can, and try to live our lives the best way we can.

I had a long talk with my Onc about this especially being triple positive, Both Onc's state that Her2 trumps ER/PR positive, and with finishing a year of Herceptin the first 3 years are the most important. THey state they will even most likely discontinue the hormone therapy at that time because of the miracles of Herceptin. That being said I had a very weak estrogen score so that may play into it, but they did say Her2 trumps the ER PR positive score and it is so aggressive that the first 3 years are important.

Had this very conversation with my Onc. a few weeks ago at my 5 1/2 yr check up....I said..So...that's it ? I mean what do I do now ?( besides continue my AI) Well,I guess I expected more enthusiasm or excitement .H..that was how I felt !!! He said that in some cancers the 5 yr. mark was a real milestone..and that although 5 yrs was good when I got to 10 years we'd really have something to talk about.....granted I didn't want him to jump up and down but I was the one who had lived in terror for months and then slowly realized I was not going to die tomorrow......sometime we just need a little positive enforcement . I guess we are the only ones who really "get it ".

In my book it is a major milestone..and in 4 1/2 years I will expect a little jumping up and down from him !