Hello everyone,
I've tried researching this everywhere and am having no luck. 7 years ago, my mother was diagnosed with TNBC. She completed treatment but about 2 years after, they discovered more cells (they emphasized that they were cells, not a tumor. Not sure if that makes a difference). I found it today that they discovered cancerous cells (again, they seemed to emphasize that they were cells) in her brain.
They put in a port on her skull and are going to be doing chemotherapy.
Does anyone have any information about this style of treatment? Or statistics about tnbc after it has spread? Komen, ACA, etc. all seem outdated. I'm not even really sure what I'm looking for, I'm still reeling from my mom having it again.
Thanks for any information anyone can share.
Reply # - July 23, 2016, 09:07 AM
Hi Mike,
Hi Mike,
Welcome to GRACE. I'm so sorry to hear of your mother's recurrence.
When there are cancer cells in the brain, the problem with chemotherapy is that most drugs do not cross the blood-brain barrier in sufficient concentrations to effectively treat the cancer. That problem can be avoided by injecting the chemo agent directly into the brain or cerebrospinal fluid (the fluid surrounding the brain and spinal cord), so that it reaches the cancer cells at full strength.
As you might imagine, the prognosis after TNBC has spread is less favorable, but it's not really helpful to focus on statistics, since they represent historical data relating to large groups of patients, and don't tend to accurately reflect the experience an individual patient can expect. The statistics are stated in terms of medians; by definition half of the patients exceeded that median.
As an example, at diagnosis in 2008 my wife's lung cancer prognosis was a median of 10-12 months, but treatment provided us with a total of three years and four months together. And treatments have improved greatly since then.
Good luck to your mother as she begins treatment.
JimC
Forum moderator