What is our prognosis, anyway?

I will keep you posted on what Dana Farber thinks!

It never occurred to me to even ask. But, seems like lots on this thread are taking Zometa. Appointment first week in January.

Hmmm. I'm still going to ask and see what she says. If the answer is sure, no problem then I'm taking it. If the answer is no I'd like to know the reasoning. By the way that goes for both Zometa and Metformin.

My mom's onc told her she had a 20% chance of recurrence with her Stage 3a. This was back when they weren't doing double mx as a precaution. She got through 5 years on tamoxifen, and another 4 years after that before she had a recurrence in the other breast. Two years after that recurrence (stage 2), it spread to her bones and liver as Stage 4. Unfortunately she died 11 months later. She made it almost 12 years with Stage 3a although I've met plenty of women on here who are still going strong after 15 years. .. We're each unique and different.

Tectonic, which only goes to show you that medicos have trouble making heads and tails of things too, I think. I agree it is funny, but it is also sort of maddening that as patients we are largely left to judge a lot of this stuff on our own steam.

Now that I think about it, I may well ask my other doc what he thinks about metformin. I think I did try once upon a time, but we had more urgent matters at the time.

tectonic, yeah, I have tried that, lol. My onc CLEARLY does not read any emails. My other doc will look at articles, and respond intelligently. So, I will ask him.

I think most of them are simply to busy to absorb anything outside their immediate concerns or preoccupations. It used to rile me, but I have concluded that there is no point in trying to get blood from stones.

Lucky I saw that yesterday. I also listened to the podcast put together by BCO. The conclusions are definitely different from what I had seen previously.

Lucky, best of luck. The podcast did mention that they had not looked at women who were pre-menopausal at DX, and post-meno after TX. I fall in that group, so I could still be in limbo.

jab - I was reading back over a post I wrote to you & realized that I worded it in a way that sounded insensitive. I completely understand why you would want a path report that gave you all the possible information. I'm in that grey area as well because I had chemo pre-surgery. It shrunk the tumor down a lot and my ALND showed only 2/14 nodes positive, but I know that there were at least 3 positive when 3 were biopsied. So I will never know how many we actually positive - I take a guess at 5 but it might be a lot higher. I have used cancer math and the predict site & played around with the numbers a bit - figuring that I know some kind of a 'range' and the results come out somewhere between 35 to 45% chance of dying of this disease in the next 20 years. (that's if I complete 5 years on tamox/AI treatment. But there are things these sites can't factor in. I guess somehow I have to find a way to deal with the uncertainty - even if I knew all the factors & exactly how much each one 'counted' and dropped it down to 30% or raised it up to 50% - I don't know as it would make me feel a whole lot better or worse. It's a hard thing to 'let go' of the worry. And now I'm sitting here with a swollen lymph node in my left arm pit (the non cancerous side) thinking about well what are the chances that if a person has X chance and then has this happen, what are the chances of that then being positive. I'm driving myself crazy with it and beating myself over the head that I didn't call the doc on Friday, cause now I have to wait for Monday. Still - I do plan to live til 90 and die in my sleep.

Ziggypop,

hope you ok and manage to get in with doc.

ws x

Thanks wintersocks, I'm sure its nothing - just not 100% sure. I hate to call my onc when any little thing happens, and I usually think I'm imagining things, but this is almost certainly a swollen node - I can even feel a vein like thing leading into it & it's been around for a week now, so I feel entirely justified to at least call. Hate this stuff.

Dutch, here is a link to the page with the podcast that discusses zometa. The info is towards the end: http://www.breastcancer.org/community/podcasts/sabcs-20131212

The other thing that concerns me is that my femurs and hips are very strong and healthy. I worry that zometa could destroy them. I would so hate to have a femur break.

Myra - seems like no one is able to give a clear answer...just statistics. As time passes you will learn to live with the uncertainty.   At least I have!  I'm also a Dana Farber patient so we are both lucky to have the ability to be treated at a great NCI hospital. 

Good luck on the bone scan next week (it's an easy test) and with the start of chemo. I had the same regime. Not horrible but not great either. Just when you think you have had enough, you are done!  

Myra, rant away girl ! I always feel so bad for you young moms dealing with this shit ! I am 58, & at least my kids are young adults. I also had the cancer growing all around the nodes, in & outside...Yikes ! My oncologist,  says don't worry about what you can't control...I have tried to tell her for 4 months that it is a f;&@/ing nightmare to deal with. I knew from the get go, if I needed meds to go elsewhere.

I think it's such a mystery, about who is going to get mets & who is going to be the lucky one...

Myra, find the chemo thread for Jan. and join those ladies, you all will be doing it together. That will help. I hated chemo....lost a lot of weight..one month later, still struggle to eat, I never thought I would say that. Good luck...

Above people were asking about Zometa side effects.  I'm having the fever which started during my sleep last night the day of the treatment.  Anybody know how long this is going to last or what to expect?