Info Regarding Chemo Treatment

StrongGirl -

I'm a triple neg. with ILC and my treatment plan calls for 27 weeks of chemo, surgery and then 6-7 weeks of radiation.  I'm participating in a clinical trial and my chemo schedule is 12 weekly infusions of taxol with a daily pill of sunitinib (an investigational drug), followed by 15 weekly infusions of AC. 

My treatment facility feels pretty strongly of benefits of the weekly infusions.  They feel when you give the patient time to recover between treatments that you are also giving the cancer cells time to recover.  So they give smaller more consistant doses of the chemo drugs that the patient can tolerate and the cancer cells can't. 

Probably more information then you wanted but there you have it, not all treatment plans are created equal.

Hi Stornggirl, that sounds good to me...I actually had only 4 A/C and recently begged for 2 more...then I had taxol a cousin to Taxotere...I've heard of lots of triple negs doing well with Taxotere and I'm goin on that next.

 I had one question...with the 6 a/c do you know are you getting 60 each time with a cumulative dose of 360?  Can you ask your oncologist for me or are you gettting less each time?

Is it every 2 weeks (dose dense) I do believe that is a good way to go.

 -Meg

Hi CalGal,

I'm wondering what was your first treatment plan when firstly diagnosed with bc? ...and why taxotere instead of taxol?

CMF (cylclophosphamide, methotrexate and fluorouracil) started out with high dose.

If you have CMF, you'll have a total of six cycles of treatment. Each cycle lasts 14 days and is repeated every 4 weeks. So that's a total of six months of treatment. On days 1 and 8 of each cycle you'll have an injection of methotrexate and 5-fluorouracil (also called 5-FU) at the out-patient clinic. You can have an injection of cyclophosphamide at the same time, or you can take a cyclophosphamide tablet each day for the first 14 days of each cycle.

Main side effects

• Nausea
• Tiredness
• Mouth ulcers
• Infections
• Diarrhoea
• Some hair loss
• Loss of fertility

I took the cylcophosphamide myself at home.  And, I made sure I never missed a dose either.  They called it the sandwich because I had CMF for 3 months radiation 5 weeks, then boost 1 week, CMF for 3 months.  (Most of the time my neutrifils were low and had to wait 1 week before I could start the next treatment).

Jason -

I was first dx'd with bc in 9/2004 ... as a 4-1/2 month newlywed wanting kids.   My tumor was 2.2 cm.  Unfortunately, I gave too much credit to Dr. Susan Love's book at the time (no real info on triple negatives).   All of the rec'dtns were for tumors over 2 cm to be treated with chemo.  I thought for .2 cm  I didn't want to possibly lose my fertility.   Thus, I decided that if my SNB was clear, I wouldn't do chemo - and if there was node involvement, I would do chemo.   There was no node involvement!   During that surgery I had bi-lat lump's and then 38x rad'tn on the invasive side.

NO MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL EVER SAID THAT BC CAN SPREAD DIRECTLY THRU THE BLOOD - EVEN WITH CLEAR LYMPH NODES!   (Which is why now, I make a big point of mentioning that).

A year later, I had recurr bc - but that mamm was misread, and I discovered the lump 2 mos later.  We're now at 12/05.  I again pushed for a CT scan and finally got it ... and more than I ever feared - bc mets to the liver and unrelated likely kidney cancer.

My onc wanted to do AC every three weeks and then immediately 4 Taxol and scans after the 8 treatments.  Based on my research, I did 4 dose dense AC instead and then had a scan - and an outside opinion.  Due to the major shrinkage and the outside opinion at a major cancer center, I then did 2 more AC and had scans again   Then I took a break for RFA of my liver mets (another huge fight with my then-HMO). 

Instead of doing Taxol alone per my onc, I felt that Taxotere & Carboplatin was a better option as a trip neg with mets.   We're now at 8/06 - and note that this was BEFORE Carboplatin was thought to be a good choice for trip negs.   My onc was reluctant to use Taxotere since she had  two prior patients who had such horrible reactions to it that they were hospitlized.  While my onc was not pro-active, she was interested and supportive in the issues and studies I'd bring to her.

CalGal 

My doctor told me today, that the research does say that Her2 do not need to take "A".  He did say of all the breast cancer now they know more about Her2, than they do the other kinds.  Who would believe it...he said "we" still don't know what we are really doing with the triple negs.  To early to tell about the Carbo, Avastin and other new protocol's.  The will need anywhere from three to five years more to is a true trend these protocol's/

Flalady 

Hi'

I had 6ac 3 years ago. I was too overwhelmed with the cancer to really question my treatment. I did not have T.