what type of cancer if progression.

mandy you poor thing, you have been around the mill. after all that time bloody mets to your bones.

good point, it absolutely infuriates me when you have been through so much and they make you wait for a simple biopsy that could show so many different things. mandy be aggressive as you can because ibc is so nasty and you have every right to know exactly what is going on inside you and especially now with mets. its all about bloody money!

assuming is not enough, your onc should have done these tests so you know you are getting exactly what you need and not to be told later, we should have done this.

sorry for the rant it just makes me so angry that you are going through this and not completely sure/satisfied you are getting the correct treatment.

from bloody bloody bloody

((hugs))

hoping so too mandy that technology is just around the corner.

i also get my results before i see onc so im ready to fire all the questions at him.

glad you do have a great relationship with your onc but even so make sure you get what you want/deserve, ibc is aggressive so we need to be also.  think sometimes onc's become a little complacent if we just go along with them.

just like you have highlighted, if it weren't for your other symptoms, not relating to cancer that showed your mets and who knows how far they could have spread before your next scan.

it was the same with me they had told me after my mastectomy that i couldnt have more chemo.

had a really bad path showing only 0.3 clear margin, 17/24 nodes were bad, 10cm trip neg ibc. i was not happy with my then onc because i was wanting more chemo and she wouldnt give it to me so switched and at the same time had a blood clot, after scans showed nodes on chest wall were back and thankfully new onc gave me more chemo.  it just shows those nodes would have been sitting there for another 3 months before i would have had next tests, scans and would more than likely have spread to mets.

feel sorry for my poor onc, when im there i tell him about all the new research i find and luckily he is very obliging and sits there and lets me get it all out.

 for your next appointment, our guard

not that this makes any difference to what the cancer is going to do!

From The American Cancer Society website

"An important point some people have trouble understanding is that the stage of a cancer does not change over time, even if the cancer progresses.  A cancer that comes back or spreads is still referred to by the stage it was given when it was first found and diagnosed - information about the current extent of the cancer is added to it.

For example, let's say a woman was first diagnosed with stage II breast cancer and the cancer went away with treatment.  But then it came back with spread to bones.  The cancer is still called a stage II breast cancer with recurrent disease in the bones.  If the breast cancer did not respond to treatment and spread to the bones, it's called a stage II breast cancer with bone metastasis.  In either case, the original stage does not change and it's not called a stage IV breast cancer.  A stage IV breast cancer refers to a cancer that has already spread to a distant part of the body when it's first diagnosed.  A person keeps the same diagnosis stage, but more information is added to the diagnosis to explain the current state of the disease.

This is important to understand because survival statistics and information on treatment by stage for specific cancer types refer to the stage when the cancer was first diagnosed.  The survival statistics related to stage II breast cancer that has recurred in the bones may not be the same as the survival statistics for stage IV breast cancer."

So, if I understand the above correctly, one does not progress through the stages like grades in a school.  One does not become stage IV simply because one has developed metastatic disease.  What you are staged when you are first diagnosed remains your stage for life.  If you do develop distant metastasis, you don't "graduate" to stage IV, you remain at your original stage, with a qualifier added that says you, now, have metastatic disease.

Questions: Does this mean that a stage II breast cancer patient who remains NED for several years before developing metastatic disease has a better survival outcome than someone who was stage IV out-of-the-gate?  Or are the statistics more favourable for a stage IV patient?  How important is this distinction?  How does it impact survival statistics, if at all?

in the end it doesnt really change anything but then again, treatments might be different and being able to join certain clinical trials depending on staging.

too confusing for me.

xx

thx caryn

xx

me too terri, we are complicated and so is cancer..