[Joan M]

Yes. Perhaps you can work!!

I didn't have liver mets but if your disease is limited to two lesions in the liver I would ask your oncologist whether you might have a local treatment like radiofrequency ablation or cryoablation. RFA is radio waves (not radiation) that burn a tumor, and cryoablation freezes the tumor.

These processes are used mostly in primary liver cancer, but also for metastatic disease when it's limited. However, RFA and cryoablation are not standard of care for metastatic breast cancer and as a result, many oncologists really frown on these procedures.

Several HER2+ women on this message board have used these procedures and perhaps they'll add their thoughts.

My solitary lung tumor was treated with RFA in August 2008 and I have not had any tumors in the lung since then. I first treated the solitary lesion, which appeared originally in 2007, with a lung wedge resection, but the cancer recurred in the same area a year later even though I had clean margins, so I decided on the RFA the second time.

If you use either RFA or cryoablation, you could follow up with a course of adjuvant chemotherapy and Herceptin, and then just continue on the Herceptin. I've been taking only Herceptin since January 2007, never chemo since my cancer advanced to stage 4 in 2007, as I was originally diagnosed at stage 2b in 2003. I attribute this only to the fact that in each case the tumor was removed. However, I regret not following up with chemo, which was offered to me at the time -- I was to busy trying to get back to work .... That is the only thing I would have done differently, adding the chemo after the wedge resection, and if the tumor had recurred after that surgery, adding it after the RFA.

I highly recommend an RFA and doing it first, rather than a wedge resection first.

Best to you, and let us know what happens.

Joan