Has anyone stopped responding to chemo and had a positive outcome after other treatment?
I’ve had five rounds of chemo for my weakly ER positive stage 2b cancer (only treatment I’ve had so far, no surgery and no radiotherapy yet).
Today after several weeks of saying that I didn’t think it was working as I felt it was bigger and it hurt, I’ve had a scan and the main tumour has grown and is now bigger than it was at diagnosis, despite initially showing response. The only positive is that my two positive lymph nodes have shrunk.
Apparently this is relatively rare, especially given my initial strong response - the breast surgeon said she’d never come across this happening before, and usually it the chemo was either effective or not effective at all, not initially effective then stopped.
Has anyone been in this situation and what was the outcome? I’m not having my last round of chemo and instead having surgery sooner (in two weeks).
Hi Blueelfin
It’s understandably frustrating and disappointing when treatments don’t work as well as you hope. Breast cancer isn’t a homogeneous disease and not every cancer reacts the same way to a treatment. Cancers by their nature tend to mutate when faced with treatment. One of the reasons chemo is given first is to find out whether the cancer is responsive to that particular treatment.
Your medical team have decided the best course of action is to move onto surgery. Surgery is your main treatment anyway as it’s the one that removes the known cancer. The pathology report from that will determine likely next steps.
Macmillan Support Line - 0808 808 00 00, 7 days a week between 8am-8pm
I am a Macmillan volunteer.
I have metastatic Triple Negative Breast Cancer, in remission
Hi, thank you - you’re absolutely right. I think it just scared me as everyone seemed so shocked and there was quite an almost frantic atmosphere in the air when it became apparent from the scan that the tumour had actually grown. It’s also that it responded so well initially, so even though I knew really that it had grown before my appointment (and had actually told them I thought it had a few weeks ago) I’d been hoping I was wrong. I just hope it’s not already spread further in the meantime. I’ve got some suspicious shoulder pain they’re going to scan after my surgery 
