Is six percentage points worth chemo?

This is your chance to prevent metastasis. Once it spreads, you will be on treatment forever, and with triple negative, that will mean one sort of chemo or immunotherapy forever. That is just something to consider. Triple negative is aggressive. That being said, it depends on your age, your health status, and any underlying conditions that chemo could worsen. You could get a second or third opinion to help you decide.

I think another important factor is if you have kids. There was one poster on this site who had a recurrence after 2 years. I'll never forget her posts about hoping to live to see her kids graduate, the thought of never seeing her grandchildren. She has been has been living with Stage IV for 8 years. Thankfully she has seen her children graduate. A few points could matter tremendously, although there is not a guarantee. For myself, being triple positive meant that I had to have chemo (standard protocol for triple positive). I thought about skipping chemo but I knew if I had a recurrence I would have constant regret that I did not have chemo. Just wanted to add some thoughts. Of course, your decision is up to you and you have to do whats right for you,

hapa's analysis is good. I read on another threat in TN that you have neuropathy issues already. That might be a major reason for not doing chemo, if (for example) you had a 20% chance of worse neuropathy...

I couldn't work through radiation, but there is another teacher at my school who worked through chemo! So I felt like a bit of a wimp. But this is to say, at least for some women, it is possible to work a demanding and relatively physically active job through chemo.

Salamandra:

My great aunt worked through chemotherapy, but she had a desk job.

I worked through 6 rounds of TCHP. I had very few major problems but tons of little ones. I had neuropathy which left my hands and feet numb after one of my rounds, I had to leave work that day because I was too clumsy to walk and couldn't type worth crap. I had one day of bad vomiting, besides that I was okay, I just needed to stay on top of the nausea; I think once you start vomiting you're kind of screwed, so I would take the anti-emetics for a few days once the steroids wore off. I started getting swollen after the last two rounds which was the worst side effect, I think. I work in a factory and after 8+ hours on my feet my legs would be really swollen and uncomfortable. I was also anemic and tired, but not so bad that I needed a transfusion (I never would have consented to a transfusion anyway; I'm convinced it's all hobo blood). I worked out 5x/week until the bitter end, even if it was only 20-30 minutes on the elliptical at the lowest resistance, because it made me feel better. The swelling started to go away a few weeks after I finished chemo and I was able to start back on regular workouts about 5 weeks PFC (but had to stop again for my mastectomy). I had my last TCHP on July 11 and the last bit of neuropathy seems to have cleared up recently. It had been very mild all throughout chemo but got a lot worse after my mastectomy, and I wonder if that's because I had quit working out. I did four rounds of accupuncture with electrical stimulation for the neuropathy, but I'm not sure it helped.

One hundred people are in a room that nobody wants to be in. Eighty-six get to leave, and fourteen are left in there. Yikes. But wait — six more will now be allowed to leave. Is six percentage points worth chemo? It is if you are one of those six people.