Thanks for posting this.  I read it yesterday.  I don't know how in the world I managed to ignore the fact that my diagnosis was so dire.  I finished treatment about a year ago.  Actually, my last radiation was May 4.  My doctors told me that my chances of survival were about 85%.  After reading this and hearing that this type of breast cancer is practially a death sentence, I am ready to panic and wonder if my doctors were lying to me.

On top of that, my new oncologist had me do a ct scan on Feb 2.  I called too soon about it and they had not gotten the results back.  Then I just simply forgot.  Fast forward to Monday of this week, three months later when I sent to see Dr. Cuartas and found out that the scan had shown something on my thyroid.  His office never did anything with the report.  I have an appointment for ultrasound on Friday.  I am so scared and angry and terrified.  WHAT THE HELL WERE THEY THINKING????  I could have cancer and they can't be bothered to look at the damn report?  I've got to find another doctor.  Cuartas is ok but his staff has been the most incompetent bunch of idiots I've ever dealt with.  It took months to get my medical records to them--and I had to be the one who finally got it done.  Then gave me a hyphenated name and couldn't find my records.  I HATE HATE HATE HATE those women. 

This piece reminds me of my aunt. She was diagnosed with bc late in her life (mid 80;'s). Of course, the docs wanted to "treat it aggressively". She said, in effect, "Are you crazy?" She knew full well that at her age, she was nearing the end of her life anyway and she wanted to spend it on her terms. She died less than a year later. I don't know if it wasfrom the bc or something else, but at least she lived...and died...as she wished. More power to women like her!

This is such a personal choice, dependent on so many individual factors, but more than anything, taking this decision depends on having quality, up-to-date information from our teams which is specific and relevant to our case.



What concerns me, though, is that unfortunately, we still see numerous instances on these forums of people making choices based on fears which come from old stats: Only today I read of someone who has just been told that with bone mets, they could only expect to live 3 months. This seems to me to be incredibly irresponsible, given that we have so much evidence to the contrary on these boards - real people living well, with good QoL, for many years and keeping those mets in check, getting to remission and even NED.



All of us who are Stage IV know that one day, we will face the decision of when to stop active treatment for our mets and switch to palliative care. But I hope that when my time comes, I will have access to good quality, up-to-date, relevant information which will help inform my choice and ease my transition. Misinformation at initial dx of mets does us all a great disservice and potentially robs us, our families and friends of many good years.



Angelfalls

I absolutely agree, Leah - great post! The core message seems so fatalistic; we'll all die one day anyway, regardless of what kills us, so why bother treating anyone with any disease, either through active, palliative, traditional, complementary or alternative medicines?!! OK, so I'm exaggerating, but that is kind of what it boils down to IMHO.