hope all is well i am wondering how long you girls waited after chemo to have your surgery?

I also wanted to add, who here had a MX and still got radiation? My mom’s BS said she won’t need it if she gets a MX

Thanks!

Hi - I had chemo first as well. Surgery was 4 weeks after chemo. I had a BMX. I achieved pCR, but radiation is still recommended. I'll start in mid-July - about 6 weeks post surgery.

FWIW, I had 4 different doctors recommend radiation therapy in my case. Although I achieved pCR and had a BMX, the consensus was that with TNBC and how aggressively it presented initially, that I would most likely benefit.

I had lumpectomy prior to chemo. Chemo was scheduled to start 22 days later. In actuality, my first infusion was 36 days after surgery. With lumpectomy comes radiation, so that will be the last step.

Notdefined - according to my medical team at MD Anderson, radiation after a mastectomy for triple negative is often the "standard of care" and therefore covered. They have a multi factor algorithm that considers the hormone status of the cancer (TNBC in our case), size of the tumor, lymph node involvement, whether pCR was achieved after neoadjuvant chemo or not, and the tumor grade. There may be other factors as well. Anyway, if you check three boxes, you are a candidate for radiation. In my case, I was TN, had a tumor of 5+ cm, and lymph node involvement, so I was offered radiation. I only checked three boxes, so I was considered borderline, but I'm going to go through with radiation once I heal from surgery.

Kber, CPR is such an amazing thing. Very happy for you. Your info is very much appreciated as you and my wife's diagnosis is close. Thank you for all your info. We can't wait to be done with chemo, CPR'd and on to the next procedures!

ucfknights, pCR is pathological complete response. Here is the definition from cancer.gov

https://www.cancer.gov/publications/dictionaries/cancer-terms/def/pathologic-complete-response

And a little different definition: "A pathologic complete response is usually definedas the absence of residual invasive disease in the breast and in the axillary lymph nodes at the completion of the neoadjuvant treatment. ... Thus, patients who achieve a pathologic complete response are at much lower risk for subsequent distant disease recurrence."

Also here is the list of abbreviations you can find on this site. Look at the bottom on the left margin for the link

https://community.breastcancer.org/forum/131/topics/773727?page=1#idx_1

Good morning all. I hop in and out of these pages. I also did chemo first, had lumpectomy with 5 nodes removed. My surgery was 2 weeks after chemo. I did achieve pcr, then did 30 rounds of radiation which I finished on April 15th.

It will be a year in June 26th that is was diagnosed. I have to say the month of June has gonna to e not my favorite. I find myself going back to last year. I keep getting these fears everytime I have a pain or ache that it's back.

My first mamo will be July 10th and I am so scared. Trying to live with this everyday and worrYing about reaccurance scares the cap out of me. Anyone else feel like this.

ucfknights - there are MANY of us...we just don't post often....and some check in here maybe only once a year. I have seen many posting after 10, 15, + more years during my years of following this thread.

Hey santabarbarian. Yes, I plan having vitamin c infusions once I am done with chemo.

ucfknights - I am approaching 9 years out and doing great. While I do think about breast cancer occasionally, it is not on my mind every hour of every day like it used to be. I am loving life, traveling and making memories along the way. I was 44 when diagnosed and now I'm 2-1/2 years from retirement! I remember a time when I wouldn't make plans even 3-6 months in advance and now my husband and I are making our retirement plans. Life does get better with much less anxiety about the big C returning. Now I'm just enjoying every day. We have a cruise at the end of September and going to Cabo with my whole family for a wedding in November. Life is good

Hugs,

Kathy

moth I hike up a mountain a couple of times a week, so 7 minutes of going up hill w/ breathlessness theoretically pumps all my blood through working muscles?

santabarbarian - that was my reading of the research and I think it's a plausible explanation for some of the benefit of exercise on lowering risk of recurrence, and the studies I saw which specifically linked intensity to better results (ie runners did better than walkers). What I'm not clear about is how frequently this has to be done. It will presumably only work on a single cell. Once the travelling cells clump and lodge in tissue & begin dividing, this wouldn't work. So I'm not sure if this means it has to be every day or what? TN cells (& esp Grade 3) grow so rapidly that I fear if it's not done frequently enough, some will get through.

I do cardio regularly several times/week but I haven't managed to do it daily and I'm sort of wondering if it has to be daily to actually have a chance of working. This is one of those things that the more I think about it, I should really prioritize...

16 years this week I had my TMBC tumor removed. Hard to believe my youngest was just 1 at the time and now has just graduated high school. All the years since I have focused on exercise as much as I could when i wasn't dealing with other health issues. I also changed my diet a lot since that first diagnosis. Though my diet has changed a lot still over the 16 years I find I have eaten a healthy diet about 80% of the time over the years. Over the past 5 or so years I have lowered my red meat dramatically and increased my organic foods. I have started Vitamin C IV infusions after my first surgery this year to help with healing and improve my immune system and plan to keep them up to reduce my risk of reoccurrence.

I have found a love for travel sine my first diagnosis and though early on it was hard to plan trips that weren't in the short future over time I was able to make more long term plans. Good luck to everyone on this journey it has its highs and lows and I personally try and make the most of it.

This looks good .... common tapeworm medication effective against stem cells / TNBC

https://m.medicalxpress.com/news/2019-03-tapeworm-drug-common-vulnerability-tumor.html

I can't recall where I found this link about a study in The Netherlands examining adjuvant chemotherapy for Stage I TNBC. I apologize if it was previously shared land I missed it. Note that this refers to chemo after surgery (adjuvant), not before (neoadjuvant).

"Benefit is most evident in grade 3 tumors and tumors greater than 1 cm and not evident in tumors less than or equal to 1 cm and grades 1 to 2."

https://www.healio.com/hematology-oncology/breast-...

Lyn