Chemotherapy

Hi Avamae

Welcome to the Macmillan online community. I hope you are finding this to be a helpful and supportive environment. My name is Lynsay, and I am one of the information nurses with Macmillan Cancer Support.

I hope you have recovered well from your surgery.

It is not unusual for people to feel a bit unsure about chemotherapy. It can feel quite daunting and even a bit scary when you consider the potential side effects that can be associated with chemotherapy treatment.

This being the case, it is important that you feel confident you understand why chemotherapy treatment is being offered to you and what the potential benefits are for you. Understanding this means you are able to make an informed decision about having chemotherapy treatment.

Chemotherapy is commonly given after surgery, not to treat the breast cancer, as all visible signs of this have been removed. It is given to reduce the risk of the cancer coming back again. After surgery people can be at low risk, medium risk or at higher risk of the cancer coming back.

A number of different things can affect the risk of the cancer coming back. These include the kind of breast cancer that was present, how big the cancer was, the grade of the cancer and whether any lymph nodes where affected.

You mentioned you were diagnosed with metaplastic breast cancer. This kind of breast cancer is quite rare and is also often found to be triple negative. Triple negative breast cancer means that there is no overexpression of receptors for oestrogen, progesterone or HER2.

Overexpression means there are far too many receptors. This is not the case with triple negative breast cancer, so treatments that block these receptors like hormone treatments or Herceptin would not benefit you as treatments to reduce the risk of the cancer coming back. However, chemotherapy tends to give more benefit for triple negative breast cancer as a risk reducing treatment than it does for other kinds of breast cancer.

Your breast care nurse would be able to talk to you more about the reasons why your consultant is recommending chemotherapy. This is most likely due to the kind of breast cancer that was diagnosed and the grade of this cancer, with the intention of trying to reduce the risk of recurrence, to make this as low as possible.

You are also more than welcome to call us on the support line if it would help to talk this through more or if you have any other questions we could help you with.

I hope this information is helpful. Please do get back in touch with us if you need any more information or support.

All the best

Lynsay

Cancer Information Nurse Specialist

You can also speak with the Macmillan Support Line team of experts. Phone free on 0808 808 0000 (7 days a week, 8am-8pm) or send us an email.

Ref SMG

Hi

Thank you for your help and quick responce    I saw the doctor today at the hospital am going on Monday to Maggies to see a cancer nurse about side effects and my chemotherapy should start a week of Thursday if all goes well  i understand that my cancer is fast growing