Calling all triple negative breast cancer patients in the UK
Comments
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Hello bak94
I am so very sorry to hear that you are having so much trouble and I hope that it will all get sorted out sooner than later.
I have great reservations about all kinds of ports being inserted into the body.
I had my neo-adjuvant six month chemotherapy without any ports and had no problems. I just had intravenous cannula each time. However, when I had my mastectomy, I was recommended having a port installed above the good breast, because it was thought I might need more chemotherapy after treatment, because I had a large tumour. I had the port installed at the same time as I had the mastectomy. However, I was not told that with the port I would need a monthly visit the the oncology department to have it flushed out and that I would also have to have a blood thinner at the same time. When I went for the first flush all was OK, but for the second the port would not flush. I had to have an X-ray and was told the port had kinked and split. The result of this was I had to go into hospital for the day and have it removed under anaesthetic. I have heard that there are a lot of problems with infections with ports. I told them that I did not want another one and was told that once one had failed they did not put any more in.
Best wishes for a speedy recovery
Sylvia
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Hello bak94 again
I read your posting about pseudomonas aeruginosa. These infections are caused by any of several types of the gram-negative bacteria. The pseudomonas that you have appear to be quite common. Infections range from mild external ones to serious internal ones affecting lungs, blood stream or heart valves. These infections are highly treatable with antibiotics applied externally for external infections or given intravenously for more serious internal infections.These infections are present throughout the world in soil and water. You can find them in sinks, toilets, swimming pools with insufficient chlorine, etc.
They are more likely to occur in patients who are hospitalised, are weakend by certain severe disorders, have a disorder that weakened the immune system or are taking drugs that suppress the immune system, such as those used to treat cancer.
These bacteria can infect many parts of the body as well as wounds such as burns, injuries or wounds made during surgery.
Use of medical devices such as catheters inserted into the bladder or a vein, breathing tubes and mechanical ventilators increase the risk of pseudomonas aeruginosa infection. These infections are commonly acquired in hospitals.
I have taken these details not from the internet but from the very reputable and latest version of the Merck Manual Home Health Handbook.
There are lots more details in the book.
You may be interested to know that sometimes the source of the bacteria is unknown as may occur in people who have too few white blood cells after cancer chemotherapy. Purple black spots surrounded by a red rim on the skin often develop in the armpits and groin. Immediate treatment is required.
You need to make sure that you are getting the right antibiotics because hospital acquired pseudomonas aeruginosa may be resistant to antibiotics.
I hope this will help you bak94.
Best wishes
Sylvia0 -
Hello bak94
The drug that they used with the flush was heparin. By the way, I was also told the port could stay in for life without any problem!!!
I was very aware of it in my body and not comfortable with it.
Best wishes
Sylvia
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Hello everyone
I thought I would post these photos that I took in the grounds of apartment complex yesterday. They show that spring is on its way here in Exmouth UK. I hope they will be of cheer to you all. I find the signs of the rebirth os nature very calming and uplifting.
I hope you are all well.
Best wishes
Sylvia
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very pretty Slyvia.
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Sylvia,
Those are beautiful! I love the orange flowers. We do not have anything blooming here in Tennessee yet but the first to bloom are the forsythia and red bud trees. Snowdrops and croci are the first bulbs to bloom. My favorite spring shrub is the flowering quince. I have two in my yard.
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Beautiful pictures, Sylvia......is that choisia already flowering?
I will pm you as soon as I can.Sorry - the usual excuse of lack of time.
Love,
Sam x
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Oh how I am longing for spring! It is quite a different sight here in the northwest! We have downed trees and powerlines everywhere, although those workers have done a great job in restoring power after our big storm! My hubby was out all day yesterday sawing the downed trees and limbs, still much more work is needed!
Thank you Sylvia for the information on the bacteria, sometimes the internet is scary, like saying a 50% mortality rate, could that possibly be for every pseudonoma infection or what? Just doesn't seem possible. The infectious disease doc put me on levofloxin and is going to see me again next week. My mo said something about infections can actually be good for cancer, that it triggers something in the body that fights the cancer, or he said something like that. Sometimes he gets to talking so fast I miss what he says!
Again, thank you Sylvia for bringing so much information to our attention!
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Bak, I guess that would sort of make sense. Your body kicks your immune system into gear to fight an infection so maybe it does help with the Cancer??
So sorry your going thru all this crap right now and the weather sure isn't helping. Thankfully it didn't happen but I was going thru treatment during Hurricane season and I was terrified that we would have one and it would hold up one of my treatments.
I feel so bad, everyone is waiting for spring to arrive and we're still waiting for it to get a bit cooler, I know I sound like I'm off my rocker but I really miss winter, or the seasons, it's just not the same without all four, nothing to look forward to and we've lost the ability to apprieciate the warm sunny weather because it's all we ever have. Besides, I'm a red head with very fair skin, the last place I need to be is out in the sun.
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Hello mccrimmon324 (Heather)
I am glad you enjoyed the flowers. We have had some daffodils blooming before Christmas here in Exmouth. What is it like in Florida at this time of year? I do hope you are having a good week.Best wishes
Sylvia0 -
Hello christina1961
I am glad you liked the flowers. The orange flowers are primulas and they do give a great display of colour at this time of year. They come in very bright colours - orange, yellow, red, pink, white and mauve. I particularly like the orange and mauve. The wild ones are pale yellow and we call them primroses. They do brighten up the woods and countryside.I like forsythia too, and always love to see the yellow blooms coming through. What are red bud trees? We have camellias in bloom as well, but the photograph did not come out very well. They are large shrubs with big red, pink or white blooms. They are very showy and have deep green glossy leaves. We also have snowdrops and crocuses in bloom.
I am not quite sure what a flowering quince looks like. It would be nice if you could post a photograph.
Thinking of you and counting the days for you when you finish the eribulin trial. I hope you are having a good week.
Best wishes
Sylvia0 -
Hello Sam52
Thank you for posting and for expressing your appreciation of the photographs. The choisya have been in bloom for about two weeks. They look magnificent in the grounds and have a lovely smell.Do not worry if you do not have time to pm me at the moment. I do understand and know how busy you must be at the moment. How many weeks are there until half term? Please take care of yourself.
Love
Sylvia0 -
Hello bak94
I can understand how much you must be longing for spring. Your winters sound very harsh. I remember the harsh winters when we lived in Montreal, and then Ottawa, and then London, Ontario. We had unbelievable amounts of snow and the cold was unbearable. Perhaps worse were the ice storms. I remember how we all longed for the spring thaw, which came in April. Sometimes spring came, everything came into bloom and then we were into the heat of summer. People in the UK do not know what cold is, although it is the damp that is nasty here, especially in Devon.It sounds as though you had a very bad storm and life is miserable when the power goes off.
I agree with you that we have to be very careful when we are consulting the internet. I think there is a lot of sensationalism and generalisations on the internet. Especially with cancer, we cannot generalise as every person's case is individual and we cannot base what may happen to us on what happens to others. I would not take any notice of statistics or percentages. Just concentrate on your self and make sure that the doctors are doing everything they can to rid you of this infection. Hospitals are dangerous places to be and the less time we all spend in them the better. I know in this country hospitals in general are plagued with super-bugs, such as MRSA and C-difficile. It was strange that after posting about pseudomonas, I saw in one of the newspapers here that four babies in one hospital had died of pseudomona infections and one baby in another had died of it. Apparently this had happened through the water supply, and they had to clean up the taps. I think hospitals have become too big, are over heated and insufficiently ventilated and there is a lack of hygiene. I do not like to see doctors examining patients and using computers at the same time. I understand that dirty keyboards and dirty computer screens are full of germs, more than on a toilet seat, or so I have read!!
I have read quite a few times that infections can actually be good for cancer and that it is good to have a high fever. My own doctors told me that in a healthy individual, such as I had been all my life, the immune system can become lazy and fail to function, thus allowing cancer cells to proliferate. Your oncologist may have been speaking fast, but what he was saying is true, according to what I have read. I do remember reading about a man who, terminally ill with lung cancer, got a serious infection and the cancer disappeared and he survived. It is a bit hard to swallow that we may be contracting cancer because we have been too healthy!!!
By the way, do not be afraid to tell your oncologist to slow down if he is speaking too quickly. It is important that you understand everything he says to you.
I do so hope that you will soon be fully recovered and then after a recovery period that you will be able to start your radiotherapy. Do you know how many weeks of radiotherapy you will have? You must be truly fed up with this breast cancer saga.
I still have ups and downs about all of this breast cancer, even after six years and seven months. Sometimes I feel optimistic and then I read through a thread and read that someone with TNBC has had it come back after nineteen years. I think it was another primary that was TNBC.
I know from other threads that there are discussions all the time about lumpectomy versus mastectomy. It is my own opinion, but I would always opt for a mastectomy. With a lumpectomy I would be worried about what could be left in my breast. As for reconstruction, I would never contemplate it. At least the man who was responsible for the contaminated breast implants has been found in Europe by the police and arrested. It is unbelievable what the company did with those implants.
Are you still planning to go back to Abraxane/Avastin after your radiotherapy?
I do hope you have had a good week and that you will have a great weekend.
Warm thought of support are coming your way from the UK.
Sylvia0 -
Hello mccrimmon324 (Heather)
I had to laugh about how, in Florida, you are all waiting for it to get a bit cooler. At least you should not be suffering from vitamin D deficiency with all your sunshine. You need only ten minutes in the sun a day. Here in the UK we could do with some of your sunshine! It is so dull most of the time. Vitamin D was in the news again today. It was all about how so many people are deficient in this important vitamin, which is really a hormone. Apparently children here are getting rickets due to lack of it. That disease was supposed to have been eliminated.Best wishes
Sylvia0 -
I was certain before my bmx that I would eventually do reconstruction, now I am not so sure as I do not want to risk infection or go through the whole healing process again. I do not think I am going to do more chemo, I think originally he was saying just more avastin. Someone posted an interesting bit on avastin like drugs saying that they could lead to metastases, I can't remember which thread it was on but it was scary! I think he changed his mind because I had a complete response to chemo, but we will revisit it when I am done with rads. He seems very anxious to get me started on rads as I am also! I still have a hysterectomy ahead of me also.
Our winters our generally pretty mild, more rain than snow but we do sometimes get a bad storm that lasts a week or so. I do admit I enjoy 4 seasons and don't think I would like a hot climate, but we certainly could use a few more sunny days here! I love the snow but would not like it for 3 months straight like some places get. I enjoy where I live for the most part!
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Hello bak94,
Thank you for your post. I do hope that you are having a restful weekend and feeling better.
I can understand that you do not want more chemo and that you are having a rethink about reconstruction. If I were you I would get the radiotherapy out of the way and then give your body a good long rest. You have been through so much.
I agree that the post about Avastin and metastases is scary. If you remember where you read it, let me know as I would like to read it.
Best Wishes,
Sylvia.
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Hello everyone, but especially the newly diagnosed
You will remember that some posts back I gave information about the Y-me breast cancer support today website and I posted the main headlines of the first lot of information beginning with Just Diagnosed with Breast Cancer. This week I have been reading the second batch of information on Y-me and have printed it put for myself, so that I have it at my fingertips. I do hope that those of you viewing or posting will have looked at this site.The basic headlines that I have just been reading and again finding interesting and easy to read but precise and detailed.
Understanding risk factors.
Common risk factors.
Breast cancer statistics.
Breast cancer screening.
Diagnosing breast cancer.
Benign vs malignant disease.
Breast biopsy.
Breast cancer prevention.
Getting support.
Questions to ask your doctor.
The link is http://www.y-me.org/
I have also read the next batch of information from the above one. The basic headlines are as follows.
Treatment.
Surgery.
Breast reconstruction.
Types of breast reconstruction. I found this of particular interest.
Radiation therapy.
Types of radiation therapy. I found this of particular interest.
Chemotherapy.
Why chemotherapy. Particularly interesting was the paragraph entitled Genomic Assays - Oncotype DX and MammaPrint. These things were unknown to me when diagnosed. I think they are carried out in the US but do not know what happens here in the UK. Have a look at this section carefully.
Side effects of chemotherapy. This was interesting as I only had mild fatigue after chemotherapy.
Targeted chemotherapy. There is a paragraph here about triple negative BC.
Anxiety about chemotherapy.
Hormone therapy. Here it states that about 80% of breast cancers are ER+ and 65% are ER+ & PR+.
Aromatase inhibitors. e.g. brand names Arimidex, Femara and Aromasin.
Selective estrogen receptor modulators (SERMs).
Estrogen receptor down regulators (ERMs).
Prophylactic ovary removal.
Metastatic & recurrent disease.
Local recurrence.
Treatment for metastatic disease.
Managing side effects & pain.
End-of-life decision making.
Palliative care and hospice care. I feel it is important to remember that palliative care means support and is not just for end-of-life. My oncologist explained this to me very carefully when she asked me if I would like the support of hospiscare nurses throughout my treatment. I said yes and had some wonderful conversations throughout my treatment with three different nurses. I would recommend this kind of support.
Clinical trials. This is a really interesting article and one I would recommend reading.
Complementary & alternative medicine.
Special breast cancer issues. This would be of special interest to men diagnosed with breast cancer and also to young women who find themselves diagnosed with breast cancer during pregnancy.
I do hope that everyone will find all of the above of help and interest.
While reading all of this, I came across the statistic of about 230,000 new cases of breast cancer in women being diagnosed each year in the US. For men, it is 2,100 and the average for men is 67.
Also, while I was reading all of this, I got wondering about whether breast cancer in one breast can spread to the other. I got the impression, though I may be wrong, that this does not happen. I read that when you have had breast cancer and have another tumour form in the other breast, known as contralateral, it is a primary tumour that forms.
In all of the time that I have been reading about cancer, I have often wondered why it is that, if you get a recurrence, on the same part as you had your first tumour, surgery is possible, but, if you have metastases to other sites, they cannot operate to remove a tumour. Does anybody know why?
Finally, I have been wondering does a secondary tumour to a different part of the body look different to a primary one?
I hope you are all having a good weekend, whether you are in the US, UK or elsewhere.
Best wishes
Sylvia.0 -
Hello mccrimmon324 (Heather)
I was just reading the other thread and saw that it was your birthday last Sunday. I just wanted to send you belated greetings. I do hope you had an enjoyable day. Do you come under Capricorn?Try not to worry too much about anything. You have finished treatment and you can look forward with optimism. You have successfully finished treatment and that is a big achievement.
Best wishes
Sylvia0 -
Thank you Sylvia,
I'm actually Aquarius and I did have a nice quiet birthday. Just to dinner with my hubby.
I do try not to worry but you know in the beginning you just do but as time goes by you tend to less and less.
I hope you have a wonderfull weekend.
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Hello everybody again
I am using today to catch up on information that I have set aside to post. This is another article from the Tuesday January 24th edition of the Daily Mail in the Good Health section. My preferred newspapers are The Independent and The Guardian, but I find the health sections of the Daily Mail and Daily Express very useful and informative. The latest news to have caught my eye is one by Louise Atkinson and it is about a controversial new book entitled The End of Illness by Dr David Agus who is a respected US oncologist and who has spent the past twenty years treating people with cancer and conducting clinical trials. Apparently, in this book, Dr Agus states that science is struggling to treat advanced cancers and thinks the emphasis on protecting and preventing cancer rather than curing. Remember, the book is described as controversial. He states "We may never understand illnesses such as cancer. In fact, we may never cure it, but an ounce of prevention is worth more than a million pounds "of cure"". He believes that cancer is more likely to be something the body does rather than "gets". He believes that genes are constantly triggering abnormal cell growths in different parts of our body.If my understanding is correct, something happens to weaken our defence systems, cells continue to malfunction with the result that tumours grow out of control. In order to avoid this, we have to keep our bodies in a state of good balance or homoeostasis.
The basic headlines in this article are Loose the heels (wear sensible shoes), this avoids inflammation, Have a flu jab, Avoid taking supplements (unless you are deficient or pregnant), Get on your feet (avoid hours of sitting about), Forget the lie-in (eat meals at the same time, go to bed and get up at the same time. Apparently the body likes constancy), Ask for statins (Dr Agus argues that statins have a more widespread role to play than lowering cholesterol in people at high risk of heart disease. Apparently studies show that statins have powerful inflammatory action that can reduce your risk of many diseases. He is also a believer in low dose aspirin for the over 50s).
The link is:
There is more in the article than I have been able to post.
It is only my own personal opinion, but I have reservations about statins. I have a friend who was made life-threating ill by them and it will take years to get the statins out of his system and the damage cannot be undone. Of course this is only one incident and we have to remember that we all react differently to illnesses and medication. As for low dose aspirin, there seem to be differing opinions. I have read about bleeding in the brain, not to mention stomach. As for vitamins, again there are a lot of differing opinions and you have to make up your own mind. For many reasons, we should all be wearing "sensible" shoes!!! We should also not be leading a sedentary life.
Best wishes
Sylvia0 -
Hello mccrimmon324 (Heather)
I was glad to know that you had a nice birthday. I think a quiet dinner with one's husband is probably the best way to spend a special day.It is true that all of us diagnosed with and surviving breast cancer do worry and that, as time goes by, we get back to a "normal" life, that is normal for each individual and that cancer sits at the back of our mind most of the time. We have become cancer survivors.
Best wishes
Sylvia0 -
Sylvia-here is the link to the thread
http://community.breastcancer.org/forum/8/topic/781625?page=1#idx_3
http://community.breastcancer.org/forum/8/topic/781625?page=1#idx_3
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Sorry, you will have to copy and paste. Also, make sure you scroll up to the top to the original poster!
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Hello bak94
Thank you for posting the link. I have just been reading it and it is quite complicated, but the title says it all, "Anti Angiogenesis may not be an entirely good thing".It seems to be that researchers go along thinking they are doing good and perhaps giving a lot of false hopes, only to find that things are not as they seem. I am posting a part of the article that caught my eye:-
Importantly, the team found that these molecular changes occurred inside the smaller, pericyte-depleted tumors that had increased incidences of secondary tumors in the lungs in the mouse models. "This suggested that smaller tumors are shedding more cancer cells into the blood and causing more metastasis," says Kalluri. "We showed that a big tumor with good pericyte coverage is less metastatic than a smaller tumor of the same type with less pericyte coverage."
Because cancer therapies such as Imatinib, Sunitinib and others have been shown to decrease pericytes in tumors, the researchers' next step was to perform the same experiments in mice with primary tumors, only this time, using Imatinib and Sunitinib rather than genetic programs to decrease pericyte numbers. And while both Imatinib and Sunitinib caused a 70 percent pericyte depletion, the end results, stayed the same: metastasis increased threefold. "We showed that a big tumor with good pericyte coverage is less metastatic than a smaller tumor of the same type with less pericyte coverage," says Kalluri, who corroborated these findings in multiple types of cancer by repeating these same experiments with implanted renal cell carcinoma and melanoma tumors.
Additional experiments showed that combining pericyte-depleting drugs with the Met-inhibiting drug helped suppress EMT and metastasis.
Finally, to determine if the findings were relevant to patients, the scientists examined 130 breast cancer tumor samples of varying cancer stages and tumor sizes and compared pericyte levels with prognosis. They found that samples with low numbers of pericytes in tumor vasculature and high levels of Met expression correlated with the most deeply invasive cancers, distant metastasis and 5- and 10- year survival rates lower than 20 percent.
"These results are quite provocative and will influence clinical programs designed to target tumor angiogenesis," says Ronald A. DePinho, president of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. "These impressive studies will inform and refine potential therapeutic approaches for many cancers."
Meanwhile, for Kalluri, the work suggests that certain assumptions about cancer must be revisited. "We must go back and audit the tumor and find out which cells play a protective role versus which cells promote growth and aggression," says Kalluri. "Not everything is black and white. There are some cells inside a tumor that are actually good in certain contexts."My first question after reading this is what are pericytes? Are patients now being told about pericytes in their pathology reports or by their medical teams? Is this another aspect of breast cancer and others that is going to frighten and discourage some patients? Looking at threads and articles, I get so annoyed about all the doom and gloom over TNBC. I do not take much notice of it any more. I just look upon it as part of the common type of cancer described as invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC) with negative receptors instead of positive ones. This is how my medical team described it to me. I believe that all cancers are aggressive and that patients with hormonal IDC have just as much fear and as many concerns as those without hormonal positive status. I would think that whatever combination of receptor status you have, you will have concerns. Ask yourself the following. Is triple positive of any less concern than triple negative? All the medication for hormonal positive breast cancers have nasty and serious side effects and do not work for everyone. As I have said before, I, for one, am glad that I am not taking any medication and am putting my faith in my immune system fighting for me.
There is another link on another thread about a "hopeful" cure. The link is:
Have a read of it and see what you think. I find all this information very confusing. To the newly diagnosed, I would say get through your treatment and try to put the rest to the back of your mind.
Best wishes
Sylvia0 -
Hello christina1961
I am just posting to say take care of yourself. After a 12 hour shift at work while you are on eribulin must have been exhausting. I am not surprised that you have had to have a 12 hour rest in bed. I am sure that the rest in bed will have done you a power of good. The amount of chemotherapy you have had over the past months must have taken its toll and your immune system must be fighting hard.I hope you will have a good rest today, Sunday, and take it as relaxed as you can until all this comes to an end on February 17th. That is not long to go. Am I right in thinking you are the one going to France or Italy in the spring?
Sending warm thoughts your way.
Sylvia0 -
Hello everybody
I have looked up the Wikipedia definition of Pericyte. The link is:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pericyte
Sylvia
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Thank you, Sylvia. I always try to have my work completed by Thursday but it never seems to happen. However, I usually feel ok the day I receive the chemo; it is the 3rd day when I feel the worst- today! I did make some pancakes this morning, probably not the best food, but they were good, and I am going to take it easy again today.
I would love to go to Italy, but I am not the one planning a trip there. My daughter and I were talking about Italian a few days ago. Her boyfriend wants to go to Italy with her, and he plans to purchase a program similar to the Rosetta Stone (but less expensive) to learn Italian. Apparently, the Rosetta Stone method involves photographs while the word is repeated. Do you know of any other programs that are similar to this? It has always been a regret of mine that I cannot speak any other language than English.
I hope everyone has a wonderful Sunday! Sylvia, I am still going to post a photo of the red bud and other local spring flowers.
I also get tired of the triple negative doom and gloom. I have put my figures into the "cancer math" site and because I have the low level of estrogen receptors and will be taking tamoxifen - but don't really know if it will help - I put myself in as "negative" for estrogen and also as "positive" and the projected outcomes are pretty similar. None of us know our future; we can only hope for the best and do all we can to stay healthy otherwise. Having said that, if a vaccine trial comes along that looks promising, I will be the first to try to sign up! I have been reading about different vaccines and the research seems very promising to me.
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I don't like all the doom and gloom over triple neg. also.
I found the article I re- posted from the other thread interesting as it had a possible explanation why some small tumors spread and some big tumors don't. My first tumor in 2002 was much bigger than my recent one, but had not spread as far, and I just didn't understand this. Plus my first one was 0% er where my recent one was 3% er, maybe that made a difference also.
All the info does get confusing for me! I am still not sure if I should do the anti-hormonals, I really don't want the se' s from it!
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Hi everyone, I've finished all my treatments now. Have a mammo scheduled for february, one year anniversary of diagnosis. Been told that because i am triple negative I will be checked every four months for a couple of years and then down to every six months after that.
Hair growing well, had to have it coloured it came back snow white.0 -
Hello christina1961
Thank you for your post. I think it is fairly usual for patients to feel worse a couple of days after the chemotherapy treatment, rather than on the first day. After the first week you usually start to feel better and then, as the days go on, fine but tired. Of course we cannot generalise.I cannot see anything wrong with having pancakes as they can be very nutritious, filling and I would think they would help with nausea. I used to love the American type pancakes that we could get in Canada and were lovely for a breakfast treat. When we were in London, Ontario, Canada, we had a favourite restaurant to go to for breakfast, called The Family Circle. It was very friendly and the pancakes were delicious. We knew all the staff and they were very sorry to see us go when we decided to come back to England. I used to make them myself with buckwheat flour. Here in the UK, we tend to have pancakes without raising agent, rather like the French crêpes. It is strange you should have mentioned pancakes in your post, because I said to my husband yesterday that I should make some. I used to be quite handy at tossing them. Are you putting maple syrup on yours?
You mentioned about your daughter and her boyfriend wanting to go to Italy. That sounds like a good idea. I think it helps in life if you can make plans so that you have something to look forward to. I am sure that someone in our small friendly group is planning a trip to Europe to celebrate the end of treatment. Perhaps it is mccrimmon324.
As for learning Italian, I would think that any of the language CD courses would be useful. Learning a language requires a lot of work and dedication, but it can be very fulfilling. The experts tell us that learning a language, especially as we get older, is very good for keeping the brain functioning. Languages such as French, Spanish and Italian are very beautiful languages. I think that you just have to make them a source of fun as you learn. There are so many language courses available that you can take your pick. The Michel Thomas courses have a very good reputation here in the UK.
I am sure we shall all look forward to your photos. I think we all need cheering up. It is a gloomy, cold, wet day here and it seems as though we have been plunged back into winter. They are getting snow in certain places.
I can understand how we can all get fed up with the doom and gloom of a triple negative diagnosis and I think we must not get obsessed with this or with having gone through breast cancer. I think that it is very wrong of our medical experts and researchers to keep going on about it being aggressive, difficult to treat, and nothing to offer after standard treatment. We have to look upon ourselves as no different from anyone else with breast cancer and, above all, not to look upon ourselves as victims or worse off than anybody else. Looking back on my own treatment, for which I have no complaints at all, I do remember I was told, when diagnosed, that the prognosis was not good, because I could not be given Tamoxifen. I do not think I should have been told that, because I could have decided to give up completely before I had even started. Someone, who had hormonal breast cancer at the same time that I was diagnosed with non-hormonal, had a recurrence or spread very quickly, went for her first chemotherapy treatment for this and then suddenly died. This proves that you just do not know what can happen. I am not surprised that you got similar outcomes for both of your cancer maths calculation.
You are right when you say that none of us knows our future. That is the frightening thing about our journey through life. We do not know what is around the corner.
I really admire your courage, Christina. You finished your standard treatment and then you had the strength to go on the eribulin trial. I have been thinking about that and asking myself whether I would go on a trial if offered. I do not know that I would, because I feel so strongly about keeping medication out of my body. I think it is wonderful of you that you are doing this to help others.
If I were you, I would give my body a good rest after the eribulin trial finishes, so that it has time to recover before considering any trials with vaccines. Will you be told anything about medical conclusions from the eribulin trial? Are you definitely going to be taking Tamoxifen? Should you not be taking one of the aromatase inhibitors, such as Arimidex, rather than Tamoxifen?
I do hope you will have good days this coming week and will not have to work so hard. Have you thought any more about courses? Remember, you can talk about anything you like on this thread. Posting and not talking about breast cancer is also a means of support.
Best wishes
Sylvia0
