← Return to Triple Negative Breast Cancer: What treatments are you having?

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@thielmann1

Thank you for your reply as I am having a hard time with this new and different diagnosis. I don't have answers to some of your questions as this is still undergoing some testing. I was diagnosed with lobular carcinoma in 1998, followed by a left breast mastectomy and 6 months of CMF chemotherapy. In 2000, I had a local re-occurrence under my left armpit, which was attached to my skin. After surgery, I had 6 weeks of radiation to my left chest wall. I took Arimidex from 2000 to 2013, at which time I had to switch to a new oncologist, who took me off of the Arimidex as he felt that it was probably not needed anymore, nor was it effective any longer. ((my previous oncologist said that he would keep me on it for life.) In 2017, another lump appeared under left armpit, which was more lobular BC. It was removed with clean margins. In 2019, I underwent a R breast mastectomy as the lobular cancer had now shown up in that breast. I was put on Tamoxifen, and in 2020, 2 more lumps showed up under armpit on left side. I had a surgery that required a left dorsal flap to close the wound. After a long period of healing the wound from that surgery, I had 6 weeks of radiation on my left chest wall. The side affects of that have been very uncomfortable as my whole chest wall is bound very tight making harder for me to expand tissue and the right lung. I was put on Abemaciclib and Falsodex for treatment (extremely expensive medication!!) in June 2021; meanwhile I have 4 more small pink dots on my lower right chest wall. 2 were biopsied and show more lobular breast cancer. One of them grew to a small sized pea, which was removed and biopsied. That has come back as Triple Negative breast cancer, different from all of my past ER positive breast cancers. That was a lengthy answer to your question about my history. It is long and thank you for reading all of this. Although this is past history, I ask myself if I had not been taken off the Arimidex in 2014, would any of this occurred, as I was symptom free for 14 years. FYI, my oncologists are at Stanford in Palo Alto, California.

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Replies to "Thank you for your reply as I am having a hard time with this new and..."

You have had a long road of treatment, and you are definitely resilient to go through all of that. It sounds like you have had an ongoing problem since you went off of anastrazole. I know that typically 14 years would be beyond the time they would have you take it, but if this were me, I would be asking the same questions about that. There is a huge body of knowledge about BC, but I am in the school of thought that there is vastly more we don’t know. Both of the drugs you mentioned are labeled for treating hormone receptor positive BC, so maybe your doctor feels the same way. Have you discussed this with your doctor? There is a ton of new research and a few new drugs either in the pipeline or approved for triple negative, so there is hope. How are you feeling now about your medical team?