Confusion about reoccurrence

I asked my doctor this same question, and her response, gently, was along the lines of “We will work towards prolonging life as long as possible. While the possibility of a cure is still possible, with a recurrence, there’s a greater likelihood of metastases and/or chronic, lethal illness.”

BUT: Everyone is different. People can and do live long, active lives with stage iv disease. You are not a timetable or statistic.

I hope this helps.

If your cancer recurs, it may appear in the same area in which you had it the first time (in your case, left breast or axilla), or in a distant organ (bones, liver, lungs, brain); a distant recurrence would make you Stage IV. When you are Stage IV, the treatment would be palliative, not curative. For example, you would not get surgery to remove the tumour.

You are early stage, so your prognosis should still be good. Did she tell you are high risk? If you had chemo after surgery there is no way to tell how you reacted to chemo.

The end of treatment is a very fraught and depressing time. Take care of yourself.

Broadly speaking: A local recurrence (i.e. within the breast) can still be "cured," but it does mean you are at statistically higher risk for eventual distant recurrence. A distant or metastatic recurrence (i.e. to the bones, for example) cannot be "cured" at this time, but it can be managed.

It sounds like your doctor was referring to a distant recurrence type scenario. Also, it's not just your cancer - we are all in the same boat until better treatments come along. Take care, and congrats on finishing active treatment. :-)

Yes Elizabeth9, it’s very hard to wrap your head around that. But that is the science-based consensus and apparently the data is very clear -haven’t read it though but got this repeated by several oncologists. Once you are Stage IV, there is no such thing as a bit vs a lot and ultimately doesn’t make a difference.

Very hard pill to swallow

To me, something that doesn't make sense is...if that is true, why do we do systemic treatment at all? I

f less or more distant disease is just as impossible to cure, why do we even bother with chemo for early stage breast cancers? But the consensus is also that early stage cancer with a few cells that spread to distant organs can be curable by chemo; however, it becomes incurable when big enough to be detected by scans or symptoms? That sounds like an arbitrary distinction to me.