TNBC - not sure about chemo

Hi Michelluu

Welcome to the forum and sorry to hear that you have been diagnosed with TNBC. and that you are dealing with PTSD as well. No need to apologise for being negative as being diagnosed with breast cancer is traumatic particularly when you are going through what you are going through at the moment.  Everyone on this forum gets it. While it's completely up to you whether you want to do chemo, chemo is pretty important for those of us who have TNBC as as apart from surgery and radiotherapy there is no other treatment for triple negative,

I know the thoughts of going through chemo is scary but it's not as bad as it's made out to be.  It is highly unusual to get all of the side effects and your oncology unit will send you home with meds to take after each cycle of chemo.  They will also give you a couple of numbers, one for your chemo unit and an emergency out of hours number should you need it.

I was diagnosed with stage 1 grade 3 TNBC nearly three years ago and after having chemo, surgery and radiotherapy I made a full recovery.

If you feel up to it why not contact the helpline on 0808 808 00 00 which is open seven days a week from 8 am to 8 pm and find plenty of support from a Macmillan volunteer.  They can also arrange counselling for you if that's what you want.

Wishing you the best of luck whatever you decide to do.

Best wishes

Daisy53

Hi. So sorry to hear your diagnosis. As daisy says we all go through fear when dealing with thought of chemo but you will have a ton of support from your nursing team. They get you are bricking it and will support you all the way. The other consideration is if you decide not to have chemo and want to take a well deserved holiday after all this is done one question that gets asked by insurance companies is have you ever declined treatment. 

We are all here for you xxxx

Hi Michelluu and a second welcome to the online community

Like you, I was diagnosed with Stage 1 Grade 3 TNBC last April.

I had a lumpectomy followed by chemotherapy and then radiotherapy.

I know the list of side effects for chemo sound very scary but you might be like me and hardly get any. My biggest side effect was that I lost my hair but it had grown enough that I didn't need to wear a turban or a wig a couple of months after finishing chemo.

I started with 3 three-weekly cycles of EC, which was when I lost my hair, and the only other side effects I got was that I felt a bit lacking in energy for half of the cycle and food tasted odd, but then the second half of the cycle I'd be back to normal. When I then had 12 weeks of paclitaxel I didn't get any side effects at all and my hair started to grow back.

What I'm trying to say, is that just because there are side effects doesn't mean you'll get many and, if you do, you might be like me and hardly suffer at all.

For me, and lots of others who I got talking to at the chemo unit, chemo definitely wasn't gruelling.

I've now finished all my treatment and my first mammogram since showed no sign of any cancer