Has anyone decided not to do chemo?

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dk875
dk875 Member Posts: 20
edited June 2014 in Managing Side Effects of Breast Cancer and Its Treatment

Has anyone ever decided not to do chemo?  I was told that if I did chemo it would decrease my chance of replase by 12o/o but I'm so afraid of doing the chemo treatments.

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  • vhqh
    vhqh Member Posts: 535
    edited July 2008

    What exactly scares you about chemo? 

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  • wallycat
    wallycat Member Posts: 3,227
    edited July 2008

    I did not do chemo.

    I took the OncotypeDX and my score was 20.  They say 18 and below is considered a no-go and anything over 30 or 35 (I don't recall now) was a must do it....TailorX is looking at the intermediate group of women to see if those who score in that area benefit.

     I was also 1 month shy of 50 (so not real young) and no nodes.  Plus, mine was ILC, which MD Anderson seems to imply is less responsive to chemo.

    I was a 7 out of 8 (so what is that.87% or something like that) ER and PR + and the adjuvantonline.com software showed only a 2-4% (depending on which chemo I would have gotten) benefit.  Chemo holds its own risk so after two consults, we opted out.

     Best to you with your decision.

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  • otter
    otter Member Posts: 6,099
    edited July 2008

    dk875, are you saying chemo will decrease your chance of recurrence by 12%?  If you mean your absolute risk, that's a pretty large number.  What would your risk of recurrence be, without chemo?  What type of BC do you have?  What are its characteristics (tumor size, estrogen/progesterone receptors, HER2 over-expression, etc.)?  Are your lymph nodes involved?

    Read wallycat's post.  She decided not to have chemo, because it would only reduce her risk of recurrence by 2 to 4%.  That's not a very large benefit from chemo, and IMHO, her decision was quite reasonable, given the numbers.

    My recurrence risk was 17%, according to my Oncotype test results.  Chemo was estimated to reduce that risk by 1/3 (approx. 5%), giving me a 10-yr risk of distant recurrence of around 12% after chemo, assuming I went on an estrogen blocker after that.  I decided a 5 to 6% reduction in the risk that my BC would recur at a distant site (i.e., that it would metastasize) was adequate justification for chemo.

    We each have to make our own decision, though.  If you don't think a 12% reduction in the risk that your tumor will recur is worth putting up with the side effects of chemo, well, that's a choice you will have to deal with for the rest of your life.

    otter
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