Blessed to be 10 years out.

Triple negative 10 year survivor. I almost can't believe it is 10 years. Makes we want to cry. I did extreme things to get rid of the Tripple Negative cancer. I was a single mother of 2 young kids with no one else to raise them. I did more chemo than recommended and then an extreme version of the low fat diet (20-22 grams of fat a day for 2 or 3 years) plus 3 hours of exercise per week. I did everything I could to starve that cancer once the chemo was over. I created an inhospitable host. I thought of the low fat diet and exercise as treatment...like our Triple Negative version of targeted therapy.

I did neoadjuvent chemo (before surgery) so that we could tell if the chemo was working. That was such a good decision. It allowed us to gather so much information about whether the initial chemo that I was given had actually worked. I started with Adriamycin/Cytoxin (dose dense) first and it collapsed my palpable grape shaped tumor by the second dose. By the 4th dose, I could hardly feel it. Then I followed up with Taxol. (For some people the Taxol will do more than the AC.)

Then I did surgery and there was still some small amount of cancer in my nodes. (I did bilateral mastectomies and full disection of my affected arm pit). Because some cancer remained, I was able to argue for more chemo. If I had not done the chemo before the surgery, we would not have known that some cancer remained.

The next thing I did was I forced them to give me two more doses of Adriamycin/Cytoxin. It wasn't recommended with a break in between doses like that. The cancer could have mutated to resist it. I literally had to tell my poor sweet oncologist that I would go to Mexico and get it if she didn't give it to me. She then ordered it. After those 2 doses of A/C, I did 4 doses of Taxotere combined with Carboplatin. I did Taxotere because it is a cousin drug to Taxol (Taxol seemed to work well for me) but Taxotere attacks the cancers cells in a different way. I did Carboplatin because some small studies had that found that platinum-based chemo (Carboplatin, Cisplatin) worked well on Triple Negatives giving some women complete pathological responses. Those two follow up drugs (Taxotere and Carboplatin) are really hard hitting. My oncologist told me that I was really pulling out the big guns.

Then I did radiation.

After chemo and radiation was done, I was extreme with the low fat diet. I really believe that any remaining cancer cells were robbed of their needed fat. I was really impressed with the study that found that a low fat diet didn't matter for regular BC but made a HUGE difference in triple negative breast cancer. It was noted in a foot note. We really are different. I forget how much it helped but it was something like 30 percent less recurrences if the person ate low fat. Also, this was not an issue of good fat verses bad fat. The study cut down all fat. I ate only 20 to 22 grams of fat a day, It truly wasn't hard. Years ago, I started a thread on here about how eating low fat could save a triple negative's life. Great food ideas on there.

I also added exercise and not even that much. I think it was 3 hours a week. I walked my kids to school briskly, didn't stop walking...walked back home and once inside the house, I continued to walk briskly through the house until I hit a full 30 minutes of brisk walking. That's all I did. This was also based on a study that showed that exercise led to a significantly lower percentage of recurrences. I think it was 25 or 30 percent less.

My path in terms of the extra chemo isn't right for everyone but I had to try for a cure. (The extra A/C was a little crazy.) I had no one to raise my kids. They were ages 8 and 11. Now my eldest is a senior in college and my youngest is a senior in high school.

Hugs to all my sisters.

Meg