Triple negative breast cancer stage 2a and grade 3

Best bit of info I can give you is that breast cancer is very treatable with 90% remission rate.  Read posters profile to see their journey .  

I would advise your wife to join forum as she will get first hand support.

I know you are both scared but you will get through this xx

Welcome to the forum, which I've found to be a very friendly, supportive and knowledgeable place.

What chemo is she having, and is the cancer HER2+ or triple negative if she's having chemo first? I presume that her lymph nodes appeared clear in the ultrasound, otherwise they probably would have given her a bone and CT scans to check. If they have told you that she's 2A then that's very good as they think that it's contained within the breast. Usually at some point during chemo they'll scan your wife to see if the cancer is shrinking from the chemo. Some women have what's called a 'complete response', where the tumour can't be seen any more. They still remove the area where it has been, and check for clear margins.

Allr the very best with her treatment and chemo. Hopefully she will be lucky with side effects, but we have a monthly chemo thread on here, and the very first post has lots of hints of how to make it more manageable, Things like Evonail or similar on nails to protect them, mouthwash twice daily and a soft toothbrush. which can help avoid mouth ulcers.....lots of little things.

Hi Amit

I hope your wife is tolerating her treatment OK. I was diagnosed with the same as your wife (TNBC, Stage 2, Grade 3) in summer 2016. I too had chemo first (4 x EC then 12 x Taxol over the course of 6 months). This shrank the tumour completely and when I had the lumpectomy in the January of 2017 I had a pathological complete response ie. they found no cancer cells at all when the tissue was examined under the microscope. I think one of the reasons they do chemo first (neo-adjuvent) with TNBC is that TNBC often responds very well to chemotherapy and can make the surgery part of the treatment a lot less invasive. For me the surgery was the easiest part of the whole treatment.

Regarding side effects, everyone is different. The EC chemo effected me badly and I could barely move for days after each treatment. Other friends hardly noticed it. The Taxol was more bearable but I've ended up with peripheral neuropathy (numbness and sometimes pain) in fingers and toes (not terrible tbh). Again, other friends had no problem with the Taxol. What your wife may notice that the fatigue increases gradually with each round of chemo. 

The radiotherapy wasn't too bad for me. I just felt tired, but then I was pretty exhausted from the chemo so it's hard to say what caused it. I actually used to fall asleep while they were doing the radiotherapy (and the zapping only lasts about 5 minutes!).

On secondary BC (bones, lungs, brain etc) with TNBC you just have to be vigilant as there is no ongoing treatment for it. This is because it's not hormone related. On the plus side, your wife won't have to cope with any nasty side-effects from drugs like Herceptin, Tamoxifen and the rest. I try to stay positive and if there is anything I'm concerned about I go back to the Breast Clinic. I've had a couple of scares which turned out to be nothing but I'd rather "over-react" than stay silent and possibly miss something.

The fatigue stayed with me for a very long time - around 18 months. And chemo-brain is real. I found I got very easily overwhelmed by things and my memory was shocking. It is better now, but not back to what it was before. Mind you, that could be menopause (I'm 54 now)!

I'm just approaching my 3rd anniversary in remission and still keeping everything crossed. Other good news, apparently, is that if you make to to 5 years in remission TNBC is very unlikely to come back - even less so than hormone-related BC.