breast cancer - 1288579

nikolova
Posts:2

Hi,

My name is Fani and I was diagnosed with breast cancer at 31. I had Lumpectomy on August 2nd. I have invasive cancer, less then 1cm, Stage IA, Grade 2, 0/12 nodes, ER+/PR+, HER2- and K67- 15 % with no history in my family of breast cancer.

Currently I am living in Bulgaria ( Eastern Europe) and there isn't a place that I can do Oncotype test. The only option I have is very expensive EndoPredict.

Doctors here believe that I am in medium risk and can't decide for sure, if I need chemo therapy, but they reccoment it because of my age. My questions are:

Is it better to do chemo, or that will be overthreatment?
Can I trust EndoPredict?

Thanks ,
Fani

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Reply # - September 10, 2016, 02:15 PM

catdander
Posts:

Hi Fani, Welcome to Grace. I'm sorry you're dealing with cancer especially at such a young age.

From the discussion of the trial results found here, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3694878/
It sounds as if endoPredict is an accurate measure for deciding whether or not to do adjuvant chemo. In the "discussion" it suggests that if the test is borderline than a decision whether or not to proceed with adjuvant chemo between onc and patient should follow.

A couple of thoughts about adjuvant chemo...
In many cases adjuvant chemo makes the difference between being cured of cancer and not. So if the need is in question, someone is young, has a lot of life to live, and is healthy enough to withstand it then adjuvant chemo is a good insurance policy.

If it happens that chemo is too much to handle stopping chemo is easy and stopping most often immediately stops unwanted side effects.

Most oncologists are willing to push their patients to the limit in order to give the best chance of a cure. Most side effects can be mitigated. Oncology nurses and onc should be on top of the side effects to stop them before they even start. Talk to your onc and the onc nurses about this before hand if you decide to go that route.

Best of luck,
Janine

Reply # - September 19, 2016, 02:13 AM

nikolova
Posts: 2

Hi Janine,

Thanks for your reply.

I have been thinking for a long time now about doing chemo or not. It is hard decision, taking over my sleep too :) In the end I decided that I should do everything to make sure that the cancer won't come back. This week I will start my treatment. I can only hope that my body will be good ot me and handle it :)

Thanks again,
Fani

Reply # - September 19, 2016, 01:02 PM

catdander
Posts:

Hi Fani,

I can understand that you want to make every opportunity to rid yourself of all the cancer and I hope that it never returns. If it looks like you're not able to withstand the treatment at any point it is possible to stop treatment and most often recover fully from the side effects.

Best of luck!
Janine

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