[Sherryg683]

[quote]However, women diagnosed as Stage 4 from the get go, being chemotherapy naive, they may never recur and the chemo may do its magic the first time as it does in the lower stages of cancer (by erradicating micro mets that we don't even know are there). I stand by my fact and I am sure yours is true to but we are talking about 2 different kinds of Stage 4 patients.

Becky,
My oncolgist told me exactly the same thing. He said it was very possible that I had a complete response to my initial chemo and there was a possibility that I would not reoccur. Meaning that the chemo had gotten every stray cancer cell. He told me from the beginning that he expectecd that if I were going to reoccur that it would be in the first 7 to 9 months after chemo, that's when they see the majority of reoccurances in stage IV that had responded to chemo. It has been 2-1/2 years since my diagnosis and I have been NED since the first scan they took, which was 6 weeks into treatment. Now I am not saying that I will never reoccur, I am usually more of the glass half empty type of person and kind of expect bad news every time I get scanned but I have been pleasantly surprised. We have to have hope or we'd just as soon give up now. I still believe God has a few miracles that he hands out and if I could live another 20 years, I'd consider that a miracle. ..sherryg683