Radiation after chemo
I had a not common recurrence of breast cancer on the same side that I had my mastectomy. I went through 8 rounds of dose dense chemo and had a lumpectomy and several lymph nodes removed. One lymph node had cancer cells on the outside. I saw a radiation oncologist that wants to do 25 rounds of radiation to make sure there are no other cancer cells lingering around. Has anyone else had a similar experience. Just overwhelmed that my cancer "battle" is not over yet.
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I'm not sure what your original diagnosis was but recurrence in general actually IS pretty common. Cancer returns in up to 30% of women unfortunately. The battle is never really over.
It sucks. I'm sorry you're having to deal with it again!
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daenarys30 - I'm sorry you find yourself back here. I did dose dense chemo, 4 AC and 12 taxol. My tumor did not respond to the taxol and grew and the bc spread to my lymph nodes. I had clean margins after surgery so radiation was not recommended at the time. I had a recurrence shortly after, but wasn't dx'd until months later because my doctors and I brushed it off as a blemish. I did 25 rounds of radiation and am currently taking Xeloda for maintenance purposes. To say that I was devastated when dx'd again is an understatement. Just when I thought I was returning to some kind of "normalcy" (whatever that is nowadays) this sneaky beast came right back.
Hoping everything works out in your favor.
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Daenerys - sorry this doesn't make sense. If you had a mastectomy, you had no breast left to then have a lumpectomy. Did they miss something? Did you perhaps has an ALND - Auxiliary Lymph Node Dissection? Are you also HER2+? Please clarify.
After a bilateral mastectomy with no chemo or rads, I had a local recurrence in a lymph node by my collar bone. Because I was HER2+, I had chemo before surgery. Then ALND. Then more chemo. Then Radiation. Then Herceptin for the balance of a year.
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