Triple negative breast cancer

Hi Sgg0340,

Sorry to hear about your diagnosis. I was diagnosed with IDC, Triple Negative Breast Cancer in March 29, 2019. I have had 4 rounds of A&C. I had my 11th dose of Taxol today and my final dose will be next Friday. I was recommended to use a prescription Lidocaine cream for my port which I received from my medical oncologist. I put a heavy blob of it on the port and cover it with a piece of saran wrap about 1 hour before my treatment. It has made it painless for me - I highly recommend it! I am also stage 3 and have a lymph node that is being treated as suspicious. It showed up in my mammogram and ultrasound. 3 biopsies of it came back neg., however my MRI made them believe it was cancer. I will be having surgery the end of September and will hopefully know for sure if it was pos or neg.. Following surgery I will have radiation treatments as well.

I completely relate to how scared you are - it is all so overwhelming and scary! It's a whole new world and a whole new normal. I never thought I would see the end of my chemo - but here I am with 1 more to go. You can do this! I had a very difficult time with the hair loss. It came 2 weeks after my first chemo treatment. My hair has started growing back (around week 7 of Taxol).

I hope you have a great support system. I have also found the oncologist nurses to be so wonderful, caring, and full of supoprt! You will be in my prayers as well.

Any questions about anything please ask and I will be happy to answer as best as I can!

I know it can be hard, but try to stay positive and be strong! And it's okay to cry and let it out too!

Sgg430 - You're getting good advice from the ladies that are going through chemo now. I just wanted to reach out to you as I'm approaching 9 years from diagnosis. I was also TN stage 3 with lymph nodes involved. By the time I had surgery, there was no evidence of disease in my pathology, including the lymph nodes removed. So I am hoping you will have the same result. Good luck with your fight, you can do this!!

Hugs,

Kathy

In addition to keeping your mouth cold, you all may want to consider icing your hands during Adriamycin. My nails began to look bruised during that phase. On my 4th and final AC infusion, my nurse suggested that I ice my hands. Really, my last infusion! Smh. I find that a large, gel ice pack placed over both of my hands has done the trick during Taxol.

Sgg0340, I' m very sorry to hear of your dx. I was also dx with triple neg breast cancer July 8 2019. I have axially node and breast node chain involvement. Stage 3. So far I've had 3 taxol and and 1 carboplatin treatments. Every 4th week either atezolizuab or placebo. I use the numbing cream 1 hour before accessing the port and it works wonders. So far only big side effects of chemo is hyper activity the night after chemo and next day. One day 4 I'm very tired. The port does not hurt at all, thank god for it. I have been losing my locks, started this week big time. Going to be cut today. My wigs and hats all set. I will have a total of 12 taxol infusions, on weeks 1,4,7,10 carboplatin and trial drug or placebo, then the red devil so to speak for 4 doses AC. then surgery and radiation, followed by a year every 3 weeks of atezolizuab or placebo. I wish you well. Think positive, I have a great support group of family and extended family, plus I attended our local cancer group held once a month which helps greatly to talk about the disease with others who are knowledged. I don't know about you but after being dx and before I started chemo I was in a tornado. Couldn't get out of my own way with the emotional stress. Now that there is a plan and it has started much more down to earth. Take each day at a time and listen to your body. You will get through this. It is a large bump in the road of life, as if we all haven't had bumps in roads before. I am extremely active so when I'm tired I just crash. Not like me. But I am learning to listen to what my body is saying and I've actually have had to learn to say no to certain things that I would always give in and do, Walk, get some fresh air to clear your mind, cry, shout out to no one in particular you'll feel better. Hang in there.

Sgg, with a stage 3 diagnosis, that usually implies a larger tumor. Having chemo before surgery makes it likely the tumor will be much smaller, or sometimes even gone (pathologic complete response, or pCR) before the surgery, which makes the surgery simpler and more likely to be successful. Good luck with your chemo. Check in with the threads on chemo support and tips. They are very helpful.

Sgg0340, do you have another anti nausea prescription to alternate with? I take a 500-550 mg ginger capsule twice a day, per my MO. Ginger candy, ginger beer or ginger ale may help.

Santabarbarian, are you around?

Santabarbarian fasted during chemo. You can search her by name when you are feeling better.

I'm sorry, I wish there was something I could do to help you. Several people on BCO have more than one prescription for nausea. The ginger tablets have no SE that I'm aware of. Don't hesitate to call the after hours number for your MO if you can't get the nausea under control.

Sgg0340,

I'm so sorry to hear of your nausea! That's awful! One of my premeds was Aprepitant/Fosaprepitant that was to control nausea for 24 hrs - this was combined with my steroid dexamethasone. I also have two Rx at home to help with any nausea - prochlorperazine and lorazepam. I had 2 incidences of nausea and they helped me. You should call the doctor if you don't get any relief. I wish this wasn't happening to you. There's nothing worse than being sick on top of it all - especially if you aren't resting and able to hold down fluids to stay hydrated. Hope it gets better!! Sending prayers your way!

Sgg0340, how are you feeling today?

Slipper as you can see I WAS grade 3. I had a huge 3.8 cm tumor with a few smaller satellites near it. I had 2 lymph nodes with active cancer, one was 3 cm. My chemo came first, then surgery. Like kber, I got a pCR. High grade TNBCs can respond VERY well to chemo. So if your tumor was low grade, you did right by having it out pronto, and if it turns out to be high grade the carbo ought to help. Most "basal-like" TNBCs are high grade and those are the ones that respond to carboplatin.

Also ask your MD about metformin. Very good anti-metastatic properties. Also melatonin 20 mg at night is anti-metastatic (work up to that dose). I did not need either drug for their normal purposes but take both now and will through my 3 year window of prime recurrence risk and probably forever.

Last I want to mention HEAT.

Hyperthermia is something that is VERY good against cancer. It causes the cancer cells a lot of distress to be heated. At a lower temp than will kill healthy cells, they give off "heat shock protein" which makes them "visible" to the immune system. Heat a cancer cell to about 107-108, keep it there for 1 hour, and it will die or be very 'wounded.' Normal cells withstand up to 111 degrees. I did an hour of high heat 3-4 x per week during chemo. My breast and underarm were magenta from very light burning but this healed rapidly when I stopped doing it.

Anyone who can feel their tumor or node can probably use heat as I did. I read something about vets using heat to shrink animal tumors to make them more operable. The vets use a kind of recirculating hot water bottle. Very low tech. I used a VERY hot hot water bottle, changed the water frequently to keep it hot, as hot as I could tolerate. I love a 105 hot tub so I am pretty sure I was in the right temp zone of 108 because it was definitely hotter than I would be able to do in a hot tub.

Sgg0340, are you hydrating well throughout the chemo and for at least 2-3 days after? For my fist few chemos, I set myself a reminder on my phone that beeped every h to drink a small glass of water every hour. I think this is very important for your body to be able to flush out the chemicals. After that, I just bought two 1l glass bottles and filled them up in the morning and I just had to make sure I drink those two bottles throughout the day (+1-2 cups of green tea per day). If you don't like the taste of water, add a small amount of juice, or try sparkling water. Sparkling water was actually the only thing I really enjoyed drinking during the AC part of my chemo. Plain water just tasted horrible. But I still forced myself to drink it.

I agree with the others, you should discuss your symptoms with the nurse and oncologist and see how things can be improved for you. It does not get better with time unfortunately. If everything goes well, it does not get that much worse, but I would definitely not hope that it does get much better either by itself.