There is a breast cancer conference going on right now in San Antonio, TX. Great news is coming out already in regards to Triple Negative Breast Cancer.
Can we say "yahoo!!!!!!"
Dr. Peter . . are you there? Dr. Pinder. . .are you there? Can I join you and bug the heck out of you with questions? Call me. . .let's do lunch. I'll pay.
MUC-1 Vaccine Trial
Sign me up! Requirements include surgery, chemo and radiation to be completed. Okay, that's it! I'm doing the radiation!
DNA Repair
Remember I said that there were no markers for breast cancer - unless it gets to the metastatic stage (per Dr. P)? More good news!! Yes, there are "mights" and "maybes" in this article, but it could become a "fer sure".
Early in my journey, I was told that big pharmaceutical bucks were going to be thrown at researchers for triple negative breast cancer. TBNC has become the "hot" topic in breast cancer in the past few years. Researchers already came up with drugs for estrogen and progesterone fueled tumors, but nothing was there for TNBC besides surgery, chemo and radiation.
I truly love this analogy that my on-line sister survivor wrote the other day. It really got me to thinking. I assumed that once chemo and radiation were over, I might be tired or chemo-brained for a few months . . . then I'd be back to Renee and life would be normal.
It has been 8 months since Kathy finished chemo. She finds herself still having chemo fogs and the fatigue crashes (she has put the weird fatigue feeling into words much better than me). My co-worker told me that when she interviewed for her position with the City, it has been a year since she finished chemo. It was a struggle for her to do the interview - she still had side effects from chemo. In fact, she still has some neuropathy in her feet and it's been 11 years!!
I never bought into this "you will have a new normal" crap. Yeah, the new normal is that you are never free from the medical community and testing, poking and prodding . . . and worrying if that little ache is mets (metastasis).
In my mind, I have broken this cancer trip into three segments. Surgery, chemo, radiation. Period and I'm done. . stick a fork in me. My way of managing the scary, big, overwhelming, all consuming, cancer crap. Can I say crap a few more times? It's not what I really want to say!
The outcomes from this research may, might, gonna, will help us get back to our "real" normal.
Who knows, maybe I will live to mimic my idol, Maxine!?
Many, many blessings to you and your home!
~Renee
P.S.
Please visit this cancer sister's blog and leave her a note. We all need to step outside of our comfort zone and offer support to Judy. I don't know Judy personally, but came across her blog when looking for other TNBC peeps.
You will have to sign up to access Care Pages, but it's free and they don't add you to a spam list!
Hi Renee
ReplyDeleteMy oncologist is in San Antonio also hopefully picking up new ideas to treat TNBC. So much is on the horizon but there is such a big gap into putting things into practice.
Anyway, congrats on the last chemo. Wish I were there too (100 more days) but so far so good. I don't feel nearly as bad as I feared I would.