Can anyone explain please?

Hi Happy Mom

What it means is that they don't really know what has caused your cancer. Triple negative means you don't have any receptors or growth factors such as eostrogen or projesterone or hr (can't rememnber what that's short for) that caused your cancer to grow. With current treatment methods science has been able to identify these factors that cause approximately 80% of breast cancers. We are in the 20% that they don't yet know what has caused the cancer. Basically your treatment options are only chemotherapy, radiation and surgery and that's it. Whereas the remaining 80% can take drugs such as herceptin for her + cancers and drugs like tamoxofin for er, pr+ cancers. This treatment is ongoing for up to 5 years following the completion of chemo,rads etc.  Although there are some positives, HER+ cancer is more agressive which you don't have and you don't get the horible side effects from the drugs. It's not all doom and gloom because triple negatives generally respond better to chemo than others.

Hang in there and take care.

Caz

Brenda,

AFAIK, the probability of recurrence is very low in the "triple neg".

Hope you don't mind me providing some clarification - that Recurrence and Metastases are really two different things.  

Recurrence is when you get a 2nd dx of the same primary bc still in the breast or nodes (although the node part is debatable on this definition).   Not all 2nd dx of bc are the same type of bc as the original.   Sometimes a 2nd dx is actually a new primary.

My mom is a good example of that.  Initially, she was dx'd with Invasive BC.  Five years later she was dx'd with Medulary BC, thus a new primary not a recurrence.   

I'm a good example of both Recurrence and Mets.   15 months after my initial dx, I was dx'd with a recurrence of bc (in the breast), but also bc mets to the liver and the "incidental find" of likely kidney cancer.  Thus, I had both recurr bc and mets as well as a likely 2nd primary cancer.

When trip neg bc spreads to a distant location (mets), we are more likely to see bc in the lungs or liver.  Those who are hormone pos are more likely to have it go to the bone first.  I don't know why, but I've read that in a number of places, including some studies by MDA.

CalGal