Hi @sschafer70 I was diagnosed with TMBC 3 years ago.

@auntieoakley is right in that it's a different beast than what most people have.

On my first ultrasound, 6/20/20 I had three tumors in my right breast only, no lymph node activity - by the first week of August the cancer had spread to lymph nodes,right chest wall, and skin. Triple negative breast cancer is a very aggressive, very fast moving cancer that can only be fought with a few tools: traditional chemotherapy, radiation, surgery and immunotherapy.

I started all those treatments as soon as I could, because we were working fast to make sure that the cancer did not get into my bloodstream and then become metastatic.

I was 38 years old and had just had a baby 4 months before so I was very eager to not go to stage 4, and stay at the stage 3B that I was when I began chemotherapy.

I did eight rounds of A/C (once every 2 weeks about 4 hours),and then 12 rounds of Taxaol every week.

I took the immunotherapy keytruda for a year every 3 weeks, and it did burn out my thyroid so I take thyroid medicine now to stabilize that. There are actually some studies that show if you do have your immune system go against you while you're on immunotherapy your chances of surviving the cancer you have go up so I took it as a small comfort.

I also did 7 weeks of radiation after my mastectomy, and I did suffer side effects from that as well, but the fact that I'm alive 3 years later and I can be with my 3-year-old son everyday as well worth it.

It's so terrible getting this diagnosis I'm so sorry you have to go through it.