[LoriG]

Happy New Year's Day to all!

I just wanted to introduce myself as a newbie to this group and hoping for some positive Tykerb/Xeloda stories as I am not feeling too optimistic that anything will get me to surgery at this point.

I was diagnosed with IBC in August of this year. I am 33 years old with a 4 year old son and 11 month old daughter. At diagnosis my staging scans were clean except a malignant axillary lymph node on the opposite side as my known cancer which either means I am stage IV or I have a second breast cancer on the left side. The contralateral lymph node is ER- while my primary is ER+. I have had 4 rounds of dose-dense A/C and 4 rounds of dose-dense Taxol with weekly herceptin. Although the color improved on my breast the skin changes and firmness never got better and in fact worsened over my last few taxol treatments. My breast MRI a few weeks ago showed no improvement from 3 months ago. Luckily my PET did not show cancer activity outside of the breast. The lymph nodes now *appear* normal. My local onc was recommending radiation, but I disagreed. I went down to MD Anderson in Houston last week for a second opinion and for them to take over managing and coordinating care with my local onc. I am now on 12 weeks of Tykerb and Xeloda (oral chemo) unless I don't respond to these agents either and then ????? what we do next. I need to get enough response to shrink the tumor in my breast so I can have surgery and radiation and hopefully, in the meantime, hold off major organ or further lymph node mets.

Any words of wisdom? Thank so much!