[Becky]

My tumor was also ER+ (50%) and PR negative. I had always been under the impression that tumors that are less hormone positive respond better to chemo than the highly positive ones but these studies do not take Her2 into account. Is Kiri also receiving Herceptin?

I saw a paper at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium once on PR negative tumors (but this also did not take Her2 into account. How ER+ is Kiri's tumor? Many tumors that are ER+ but PR neg genetically look either like they are ER+PR+ or ER-PR-. It was a great paper and most on ER+PR- are in that there is not alot of research in this pathology. Supposedly, Herceptin and Tykerb together work well on these tumors. Is Herceptin in the future?

You can see my treatment from my signature. My tumor was smaller so I had surgery first. I also did not have Herceptin with chemo as it had not been available to me at that time but was after my treatment concluded so I returned to the chemo room for my Herceptin because there was no way I wasn't having it even though I had Herceptin alone.

The big thing is that the tumor is shrinking and I think softening of the tumor is good because the chemo is "making holes" in the tumor therefore, if compressed, it is probably much smaller than its measurements. Think about a big snowball - hard and compact. You only see it shrink with heat if the heat is applied only to the outside but if the heat is also coming from the inside, the inside will melt and make holes but it won't appear that the size of the snowball is any smaller at first. However, as time goes on, that snowball will collapse and it will be very measureably smaller. Have faith!