Help! How many er+ pr- with long term survival?

Hi there!

I have a very similar diagnosis to yours -- even the BRCA2 part! I know I'm only a year and a half ahead of you in diagnosis, but it's something and I'm doing great (moving farther and farther from that earlier recurrence your doc talks about). Don't listen to him. There have been conflicting studies on whether PR- is really worse or not and just yesterday i read stats from MD Anderson over a long period of time that showed the survival advantage of PR- was BARELY lower than PR+ -- like 81% vs 83% or something to that effect (and they were high survival rates for our Stage, btw!). One thing I have heard is that the AIs can be more effective than Tamoxifen for PR- and i see you have switched to Arimidex after 2 years which is exactly what i did too!

ALSO - make sure you take a look at Carmelle's post today about her 10 years survival! She is PR- just like us!

We will be fine! And Kerry is right! Doctors have no idea how words can haunt us - to them it's nothing, to us, it's the difference between being hopeful or being terrified!

Jackie

i definately fall into the ER+ (99%) and PR- (i think it was 0) .....

i saw my onc every 3 months for years, then every 4 months and now 8 years out twice a year ... had a lumpectomy(7 cm)/snb (1/4) followed by a mast (another 7 cm) .... 6 months of dose dense chemo (adriamycin, taxol, cytoxan), 6 weeks of rads, and 7 years of arimidex (so far) ....

Rachel- Yep.  Ditto above.  It is so easy to get our feet knocked out from under us.  It really doesn't matter in the long run.  Throw the sink at it and consider it licked.  Staging is about treatment.  Cancer type is about treatment.  We got the sink (and maybe a toilet or two).  

Oh and my Mom always says, what you worry about won't happen.  So I try to worry about everything and in my twisted little mind comfort myself that this is preventative medicine.

Hi ladies, I'm also Er+ Pr-, Her2-. At my pathology appointment, BS didn't really discuss the the PR-, she said the the ER+ was the important bit. I was in tears after meeting my onc especially when he said that I must have been very disappointed with my actual results... stating the obvious or what! He is a very well respected onc and I feel they treated it aggressively. He showed me a graph which suggested reoccurence was more expected in first 2 years (You are 3, happy dance!) I'm still struggling not to lose my mind when I get new pains! I had only read about pr- stuff later and did worry a little but am liking what JacquelineG post about MD anderson stats. I was excited to hear the benefits of tamox for 10years but after reading about tamox being less effective in pr- I got a little worried (don't know how less effective though). I had asked both BS and onc about Ooph and onc said not necessary (at 36 my heart and bones needed some er??) but my period just returned last week so not sure if I need to be more aggressive with reducing my er. I still very unsure about this area and am wondering if any you ladies had any thoughts. Great to hear people doing so well.