How many Stage III gals never go to Stage IV?

The subtitle is "A Biography of Cancer"; the author is Siddhartha Mukherjee.  He is an oncologist; the book won the Pulitzer Prize last year.  I think the most "a-ha" thing for me was the realization that cancer is essentially an out of control version of life itself - cell division and replication is what makes us "alive", as it turns out.  This, for example, is why chemo makes our hair fall out - it is going after the most rapidly producing cells in our bodies, and of course, hair follicles are among those (stomach lining is a close second, thus the nausea).  Sorry to babble - but the book is really splendid.  The politics of cancer research fund raising (a whole history of the Jimmy Fund in the Boston area was a real eye opener; I lived there for many years) was equally interesting to me.

My husband is reading "The Emperor of all Maladies" and he is totally fascinated by it. Still waiting for my turn to get the book! I just joined this forum today, and I think that knowing people who have survived years out from a stage 3 diagnosis is the best "feel good" pill there is. I have the privilege of knowing so many of these people as I happen to work at the Breast Cancer Coalition of Rochester (have been for many years, and then, hello, it was my turn for a diagnosis). I am so happy to have found this Support group.

Hi LindaLou 53,

 Thank you for sharing this information. It is always so great to hear about you ladies who have fought and continue to win. I wish you continued good news and please let all of us know how you are doing. I think it can be so scary to be told "you have breast cancer" , I was given 3 rounds FEC followed by 3 rounds Taxotere,28 rads and now take Fareston . I have learned much about not paying attention to  staging/prognosis as it exists today. As I said...I think you ladies and us new gals will be the new standard,but I also think more and more treatments will come as well. Again thank you for sharing. Hope and positive thinking are powerful medicine!!

Kim

weesa, i love your post. especially the part about leading "a pretty debauched life"...good to remember that we can and SHOULD tear it up sometimes!

i don't bother with stats. who needs 'em, anyway, except statisticians (whoa say that ten times fast).....

this is a great and hopeful thread.

I had two major cysts on my right breast over the course of 2 years-- they never said it was cancer but then they missed my 12.5 cm tumor in the same breast for years and thought that was just a cyst as well. 

I have ILC so very interesting to hear that tumors or bumps on the outside skin are also possibly cancerous. Is that the same as Inflammatory Breast Cancer?   Nancy, can you share any online info for outside on the skin breast cancers?

My friend was stage III and had all her treatment and NED for 8 years. She had a recurrence last year and it appeared as a rash on her chest where she had had her BMX.  The rash on her chest signaled IBC and she's now stage IV.  She noticed the rash and thought something was up. Wow. The rarer types of invasive breast cancer are weird and sneaky. I wish I were in the IDC 80% group but sadly I'm in the minority and things are a bit fuzzier here.

Nikisezz - So sorry to hear it's "your turn"...will be thinking lots of good thoughts for you.  I THINK I would also have enjoyed the book when I was in treatment...but that's one reason I have hesitated to recommend it here.  We all have different tolerences for information, and at different times.  Still, as I said, it is really a page-turner.  Leigh

Thanks for posting all of your stories. I am in the throes of chemo now, and will be til October of NEXT year (I get an extra year of TX for the HER2+ thing), and this is just the information to encourage me to keep going.  Much love to all my sisters who have gone before and thrived.

Many - this is very interesting and it's the first I've heard of this technical definition. I thought people automatically became Stage IV when the cancer spread.

What is written above does seem to be the way people use the term Stage IV here - the Stage IV message board is filled with women who started off at an earlier stage and then had a recurrence.

Batwoman: Welcome!

I just got cheered up by this calculator:
http://www.lifemath.net/cancer/breastcancer/therapy/index.php

Even with my cr*ppy node status and huge tumor, it gave me a 75% chance of still being here in 15 years. I'll take those odds!

I haven't done reconstruction, so I can't help with that, but there are some great threads on here where people know a lot more about issues surrounding that.

jpsgirl96 - I absolutely loved that book.  Great reading - and if you don't have a strong science background, the science is embedded in both historical context and modern day patient stories in a way that makes it all relevant, and not difficult to grasp. 

Hi sweetbean:

I teach graduate college statistics. I know I am not a statistic, but as I explain to my students, the stats are the resulting evidence from scientific studies. Your particular risk may be 10% or it may be 90%; there are confidence levels around each estimate. However, when a study determies that someone has a 73% (or whatever) chance of survival then you can pretty much assume YOU have that chance. It is a chance--same as if you calculated your chance of winning the lottery (which is way, way, less--by the way, your risk is never 0% or 100%, to whoever thought that). I do appreciate that the data are from older studies, but I tried the risk calculator Windlass posted--a very good site, in my opinion. I think that calculator includes the most recent statistics, so I guess my chance is a bit better than I originally thought. We are basically all statistics when it comes down to it.

So, that said, my (unscientific) opinion is that being depressed, angry, betrayed, and ready to chomp doctors' heads off is a perfectly rational response to finding out that you have stage III BC. I get a little annoyed when people tell me to look at the positive side and think happy thoughts. My best friend is so afraid that if I am a little down, it will make my cancer come back. I have to explain that the statistics show that attitude has no effect on outcome. A positive outlook only makes your family and friends feel better. Which is not all bad, actually....

Thanks, windlass! Many folks don't understand what the statistics can and cannot tell you. Stats cannot give you your very own personal chance; it gives you the chance you have of survival based on the population subgroup of which you are a member. That means there is an average survival and a variance around that average. There are also outliers (those lucky ones who have survived WAY beyond the spread of points). Because our medical research system is evidence-based, it often takes an awfully long time to get results that translate into clinical procedure. So, often folks don't trust the "statistics." Those of you who are in clinical trials should be celebrated as heroes; you will set the stage for better treatment and better outcomes! You will be a statistic, but wouldn't it be excellent to be in a study that was cut short because it showed the treatment worked and then they started giving that particular treatment to everyone?

Cat: I've been thinking a lot about that. Because I have HER2+ cancer, I get that extra year of hand-holding with Herceptin. (In my case, TDM1, as part of a clinical trial.)

So while all my lucky April 2011 Chemo sisters are graduating and getting "Done with Chemo" parties thrown for them, which makes me feel sort of bummed that I still have Taxotere, and Rads, and then 10+ doses of TDM1 ahead of me, there's a part of me that feels bad for them that they are sort of being told "Good luck" and sent off on their own.

I think that's one of the huge advantages of this board. We can continue to be there for each other after the oncologists have bid us adieu. I can't imagine how lonely it must be for women without this support network to talk through these issues and fears.

Everything I've read says that the two toughest times for BC patients are right at diagnosis, and when the treatment ends. We're in a sort of no-man's land "after treatment." We BC sisters are here for you as one form of safety net.

Can you find some other ways to build yourself a safety net? Like exercise, or diet, etc? I am already strategizing how I will cope with "post-treatment" when the time comes. I have major exercise fantasies, and detox fantasies, and antioxidant fantasies, and...

Rennaus:  Did your sister have many nodes positive?  It would be interesting to compare ....  I am so glad she has been NED for that many years.  Also, was she put on any AI's back then?