Adjvnt Therapy: Destroys or delays growth of stray BC cells?
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But I thought Zometa was only found effective for mets, stage IV and women that are well post menopause. Why wouldn't it work for us newly chemopausal?
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Oy,Oy,Oy...Lago....there is a huge controversy over Zometa...the recent AZURE study was supposed to support the Austrian study and...it did and didn't... Last month Gnant published his 6 year follow up on his cohort of women and they still are seeing good numbers, IMHO. The only reason why I interjected the Zometa on this thread is because you mention about "dormant cells."
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My onc was going to put me on Zometa (slightly osteopenic) but when the study was presented at San Antonio Conference she called and said change of course… no Zometa for me. I was not sure if I was happy or sad about this. Not in love with the SE I've about frm Zometa.
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VR - the NYT series is superb. As are some articles in Der Spiegel.
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1Athena1....The article in the series that I enjoyed reading the most was the one that discussed how the National Institute of Health funds clinical trials. I had questioned for many years how and which studies were funded and I was glad to see that the process got the light of day. Going forward, I'm not sure that much has changed...but at least the story is out there......
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Just wanted to say thank you to all of you for this discussion. I find it very informative and thought provoking.
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VR - That was definitely an eye opener and explained so much to me. All of the NYTs's cancer coverage is wonderful. They have done a good job of discussing difficulties int he early detection movement for several cancers, and discussing studies of mammograms. The only article I did not like of the series was the one where the suggestion was that Tamoxifen could possibly prevent cancer so why weren't women taking it prophylactically - not noting in the first paragraph that Tamox. plays no role in triple neg. and that it is a carcinogen and that there is no way of predicting who will get er-pos. cancer.
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Saw my BS today. He told me to go home and read this article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/08/health/research/08genes.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper
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Great to hear everyone's reply on the subject. I would love to think that we have come along ways in early detection, prevention and treatments. I guess you don't hear on a regular basis of all the long term "survivors" of cancer, you only hear of the ones dying from it. (at least I do anyways). It makes me scared and angry. Why can't someone figure this thing out?
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Thanks Kira. Yes in all fields there are posers. Hate when they do this to people and families.0
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Kira1234...I read that article the other day and sat up! Ugh. My husband has an extremely rare genetic metabolic muscular dystrophy. He sees several medical genetists, so I'm keenly interested in ANYTHING that has to do with genetics. I posted on the book lovers thread that I just finished reading Ian Brown's The Boy in the Moon...about a father's journey to discover more about his son and his son's genetic illness. It was the most important book that I ever read about medical genetics and it really put into words, again, many of my thoughts, that until this week, I had but had never seen in print.
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Plotting out the Human Genome was the easy part. Truly understanding the interplay of genes is still in the discovery phase and understanding what genes actually do is still not fully understood... He explains in the book about how his son and another child have the same genetic error and yet his son is profoundly affected while the other child is not. Doctors and researchers still cannot explain why.
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My BS is concerned with the heavy use of the Oncotype test in deciding if we need chemo or not. He isn't as comfortable using it as he was before from what he has told me.
On another vain. For those of you who know all the stuff I went through last year. The cancer center no longer sends patents to chemo so quickly after radiation as before. I guess I am an unusual case, but they don't ever want to see this kind of thing happen again. At least these are good changes.
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chevyboy: My onc said a recurrence never goes to the other breast so my second one was a new one.
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VR,
You and I read that "however" in very different ways. It says:
" Treatment significantly reduces overall breast cancer mortality through 15 years of observation. However, the average overall effect on mortality ratios is less than that for recurrence, particularly among women in the older age group, and there is no statistically significant trend over time (P for time trend > .1)."
In my understanding, it is pointing out that while fewer women recur, some are dying from late effects of their treatment. Basically, they seem to be saying. "Great! We've figured out how to stop breast cancer in its tracks in many women. Now what are the long-term effects of these treatments?"0 -
Kira, I wonder about the oncotype test too - it is the best we have, but how good is "best" - only time will tell.
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It was the first time my BS said I hope your cured. He has always been so up beat before. It made me realise just how unsure even the DR's are in this field.
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Here's what Brown says in his book:
"At the University of Oxford, a renowned gene man named
Denis Noble- the author of The Music of Life:Biology Beyond the Genone-went
even further. It was one experimental thing, Noble said, to find a gene
associated with a mutation, as Rauen and her fellow researchers had.
"Beyond that, though, if people infer from that work that people can identify
the function of that gene, that's going a step too far." The structure of
the human genome has turned out to be much simpler than anticipated. But
genetic physiology in humans-the way genes actually work---is exquisitely more
complicated than anyone imagined."0 -
Beeb75...I was just pointing out that the "However" was integral to the point the author was making. BOTH sentences were meant to be read together and critically analyzed.
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voraciousreader, That is an interesting bood. I am going to put it on my list of books I want to read.
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re: Beeb75 & VR discussion...
That's what I thought was meant by the overall mortality number, that it included deaths exacerbated by treatment S/E's (such as cardo-pulmonary events, etc.)
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Thanks S. BCsurvivor...! That's what I thought.... That is better news to me than thinking I could get it again in the same breast, but I know, or I think, that even if I do, it would be a new one.
Is it true, that you start out at stage 1V? Or do some breast cancers with positive nodes spread & become stage 1V after starting out at stage 1?
Like my Niece....She started out with Breast cancer, and I don't have all the facts, because she passed away after 12 years, of fighting first the BC...But it was in the other breast, then "Breast Cancer of the Lung" and then to bones, and her brain. My Brother won't talk about it....He blames a lot of it on them taking out her nodes.... I don't think that is what caused her death....She lived 12 years after the first DX, and that's why I think it all started out as stage 1V.... She went through chemo at least twice...a port in her head, finally.... Actually she fell because of the brain mets, and her body could not fight yet another trauma....
I think the chemo gave her time.... precious time to raise that Son of hers.... I know her stats are different, but 12 years is a wonderful gift for a young Mom. I don't know if I could have taken chemo..... I mean if I needed it...I don't know if I would be a good candidate for what some women go through...
And I don't know WHY we get BC.... I took the pill for so many years, then Estrogen....My Mom had BC, but she didn't pass away from that..... Since I am older, I don't think ANY of those things mattered... It just happened....
But I love this thread..... So many things and articles to read!
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Chevyboy I stopped trying to figure it out. I ate healthy, thin, active, almost never drank was on birth control pills for maybe 4-5 years with a break in my early 20s back in the early 80's only. No family history etc. Even though I have dense tissue so doesn't my mom and sister and they don't have it. I don't have kids but even my sister had her kids after 30. I was less than 2% chance at my age. I know many make huge life style changes. I really don't have too much new to do.0
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Hi lago - you and me both! When you're already the "poster girl" for good health habits, what's to take away or change? I doubled-up on calcium/VitD supplements and take Anasterzole.
I was called to be in a study to see if there is a correlation between weight loss/exercise and recurrence, but I was rejected when they realized how physically fit I am.
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I started my breast cancer journey in excellent health....when I was diagnosed, I was given a sheet of paper with a list of do and don'ts by the nurse. Awhile later when the doctor examined me, I reached for the sheet and told him I was already doing everything on the list. He then took back the sheet and said the list didn't apply to me....he then threw the sheet in the garbage....
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As I lay in the radiation machine today, I couldn't help but wonder how I got there with invasive cancer, LVI invasion, dermal lymphatic invasion, and 1 node after doing mammograms every year for the last 10 years. Oh, and I found my own cancer because of skin redness, but had to convince the doctors to look closer to find it. I'm thinking a lot of us have been hoodwinked with the selling of mammograms.
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Hillck... Touche! I hear ya!
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Intereting topic.
In my case, my tumor died...so it filled with blood making it large enough for me to detect it. When my doctor biopsied it, he originally thought it was a papilloma since the needle filled with blood which mimiced a papilloma.
So, did my immune system recognize the cancer cells later and destroy them? I had bronchitis months before and drank a ton of green/white tea along with taking mega doses of Vit C/D, etc. So was it my immune system or did I take something that killed them? Because I didn't have the lump then. Did anyone have a dead tumor when they were diagnosed like I did? Because, if it didn't get that big, it could have spread before I knew it. I was 36 with no family history...and the kind I have is aggressive.
I also have the breast cancer gene (BRCA 2) and my onco dx score was high. But why did my body kill the tumor given all my risk factors? I ended up having 4 treatments of chemo as a preventative.
Obviously, chemo didn't kill it. I also wondered why I need radiation if the chemo went all over my body. Wouldn't the chemo have targeted the cells? They say secondary cancers are common after one has cancer...because cells know how to mutate. But if I had the gene, didn't it know how to mutate all along, in which case is chemo effective at all? Because even if it kills everything, my cells already know how to mutate.
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I felt GREAT before, during and after my treatment. I had a lumpectomy with clear margins, 6 cycles of taxotere and cytoxan, 30 radiation treatments, and arimidex/anastrozole for the last 14 months. I'm in excellent health and my doctors all said my prognosis was excellent. But I have a lung nodule that grew from 6mm to 11mm between CT scans . . . and two nodules in the right lung that did not change. If this is a recurrence, count me as blown away! I was so hopeful that the tumor was gone, that chemo had killed any stray cells, that radiation zapped anything left at the site, and that AIs would prevent any recurrence . . . particularly one less than one year after I finished treatment.
Your question is a great one. I cannot figure out what went wrong!
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Interesting thought processes represented here...
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