Posted by Penny on 11/3/2009, 12:08 am, in reply to "chemo tx options 2nd occurance"
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I would have answered earlier but was at work and didn't want interuptions or distractions. You're sister's diagnosis (dx) and recur is remarkably close to my original situation. Here's what happened with me:
My origianl dx was back in May 04. Stage I, 2cm tumor, no nodes positive, er-pr+her2+. Had lumpectomy, chemo Adrymiacin/Cytoxin, radiation then tamoxofin until it caused the hysterectomy in April 05.
Just over one year after tx's were done, I had a 5mm recurrence in the scarline of my lumpectomy. I had a bi-lateral mastectomy with immediate, saline implant reconstruction.
Unlike your sister, I refused chemo a second time. My uneducated thinking at the time was: It was still Stage I, we got it all with the surgery, no more breast tissue to worry about and chemo didn't seem to keep it from coming back so why put myself through that again.
If I had my time to do over I would have done the chemo. Two years after my recur, it was back and I'm still fighting today. There is no guarantee that it would have made a difference but at least I wouldn't have the regret that I didn't do everything in my power to stop it.
Her question as to which treatment plan to go with is difficult and unfortunatly no one can really make that decision but her. On the one hand if she hits it with all the guns now, it leaves less options in case of another recur, but if she does hit it hard now, she hopefully won't have any need of the carboplatin in the future.
Taxol and Taxotere are "sister" drugs with Taxol being the stronger sister. It sounds like the two oncologists are pretty much on the same page with the exception of the carbo.
When mine came back after the mastectomy, my onc put me on taxotere, xeloda and herceptin and got the cancer beat back enough to be removed surgically. To make a long story short...it came back again and again with different chemos that didn't work and more surgeries. I was then switched to carbo and gemzar and stayed on that till it quit working a couple of months ago. Now I'm starting a clinical trial since I'm all out of chemo options.
My opinion would have to be to hit this thing as hard as she can now and hopefully be done with it. Once a recur happens it's very hard, if not impossible to get rid of.
Wishing your sister the best of luck in beating this monster. Please let us know what she decides.
Hugs,
Penny
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