Feeling a little overwhelmed, just told the cancer is back in my breast and has spread

rlschaller

Hi everyone,

Whew..feeling emotional. Just learned my right breast has a large mass again, it has spread to the surface of the skin of that breast, and there two spots on the neck/cervical spine area. My head is spinning. I was originally diagnosed with invasive ductal carcinoma a year ago. Went through neoadjuvent chemo for 5 months, then a lumpectomy, was disease free in July - then adjuvent with Xeloda for 6 cycles and Immunotherapy Keytruda - 8 cycles. We stopped because the recurrance happened during this treatment - now mestasis in January. So fast!

So I start a managing treatment for the disease Enhertu infusions every 3 weeks, and hopeful that it will stop its growth.

For those living with mestasis breast cancer - how do you do it? Looking for support, what is like for you, all sharing welcome.

Thanks for listening.

Rhonda

eleanora

Oh Rhonda, what a tsunami you're experiencing. First, we are all here for you. There are many of us in many time zones, so there's almost always someone to talk to.

Second, demand some help - not the medical kind, assuming they've got that covered - but someone to talk to, meds for anxiety and to help with sleep.

Someone recently posted somewhere on here about a technique called NSDR - Not Sleep, Deep Relaxation. You can Google it for more information. Looks like it might be helpful.

It would be very useful if you could fill out the cancer info and treatment history that will be attached to each of your posts. That would let others with a similar type and history offer their insights. If you have trouble doing that, the mods can help.

Welcome to the club that no one wants to belong to. Fingers crossed that Enhertu kicks butt for you.

Eleanora

rlschaller

Thank you Eleanora! Appreciate you taking the time to respond. I'm feeling better with just reading already. And I'll look into adding the cancer info and treatment history to my posts… I have to do a little investigation on how to it lol.

amel_83

Sorry to ear that, it remind me when i just discovered mine...my head was spinning too...and such immense sadness and fear...

I learned people with MBC on Enhertu can expecially have long lifes, and sometimes even complete remission!

So I wish you all the best luck!! Be strong!!

rlschaller

Thank you for sharing back with me. Much appreciated. And thank you too for the uplifting info on Enhertu. It helps knowing I'm not the first person to go throught this. I'm very grateful I found this site and community. All the best to you as well.

moderators

Hi again @rlschaller,

We're glad to see you're getting great support here already!

We also wanted to point you to some of our content on Enhertu, as well as the Enhertu for MBC thread. In addition, we wanted to invite you to join our live weekly Zoom Meetups for metastatic folks — we have a handful of members with experience on Enhertu and we think you'll find great support in our groups.

We hope this helps!

—The Mods

rlschaller

thank you so much. I’m so appreciative of your kindness and the support of the community.