Confused..

hi

no wonder you're confused 

none of that sounds particularly as I would have understood it to be but well done on it all being stable for seven and half years !

if you had a combination of different cell types including Her+ and ER+ that essential would have been treated as triple positive, even if the breasts gave different presentations, the treatments are systemic, ie treat the whole body.

I'd have thought you'd have also been given Herceptin ? But that may have depended on what they then found was the type that had spread to your bones which is slightly more likely to be ER+ , Fasladex is used to treat hormone positive breast cancers and they've stopped that, indicating they are treating you as triple negative. 

If you haven't noticed these tumours in your lymph nodes in your neck I presume they are not obvious to you and therefore measured in millimetres rather than centimetres ? 

And I would expect them to offer radiotherapy, as they have.

However, why continue the Letrozole if they now say they're treating triple negative ?  Although a quick search did throw up some scholarly articles, it might be for some specific reason. 

This is where I'd need to see the imaging scans for myself to satisfy my curiosity about their size, position and relative threat, are they tiny and in one place or are they scattered ? 

I'd certainly go for a meeting with the radiotherapy team and ask some questions, get them to really spell it out to you, what they're going to do, why they're going to do it, what are the side effects and other risk factors ? What happens if you do nothing.

Also ask what other options might be available, and if one treatment might be compromised by accepting radio first.

They usually are pretty good at getting the treatments in the right order but we're all unique.

Try not to panic, easier said that done, as meetings all take time to set up

I'm not helping much but seriously go and meet the radio team.  Which hospital are you at ?

Carolyn

xxx

Hi Carolyn, 

Many thanks for your reply, my goodness these are things i hadn’t thought about even asking, well not today anyhow. Because the disease in my bones has been kept so stable for this length of time they want to keep on with the letrozole and zoladex.  When I asked about the “change of cells” i was told that there were several, the largest being 3cmsx1.5cms they consider anything over 1cm to be abnormal, i think. 
I’m in Northern Ireland so being treated in Antrim but the oncologists are based at the Cancer Centre in Belfast. My oncologist said that IF I went home thought about Radiotherapy and decided that’s that I wanted I was to get in touch. He didn’t seem to be overly concerned but he isn’t the one that has these wee feckers in his neck. I can feel them, and once i was told they were there I did notice a dif in my neck/collarbone, one was slightly swollen. But i will def be giving the radiotherapy some consideration, better trying to shrink what’s there before they get bigger, but seeing the scan should be an option too. your reply has given me something to think about. thank you