[phil]

Annetchen - is your doc a breast cancer specialist ? has she txed anyone with T DM-1 ? this talk about stopping after 3 rounds sounds strange to me.
we left the suburbsd right away in 2006, left a very nice, generalist onc., nice but not in touch with the latest tx's and how to use them. so he recommended a conservative - " save strong chemos for later " approach . we had both lost spouses to cancer before - so we weren't buying it . tx aggressive stage iv cancer aggressively is our motto. so we went to a top research hospital with a bc specialist clinic - MGH in Boston . got a very experienced, specialist onc who agreed with us - if we wanted to go all out she would and we did . it paid off . i think she would have not even considered stopppuing atx with some response after 3 doses . she would complete it and try to make sure cancer is dead . unless intolerable s/e 's came up. u can see from lorraines' list of chemos up top that it was not easy , but we feel it was worth it. there are no guarantees -none of these are cure -alls , but the above strategy i think improves the chances.