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Thanks to all of you for such wonderful encouraging words. Yes, the PET mantra is free for all to try! It gave me a lot of comfort and something worked. I am not sure of the answers for you about tumor grade etc., as I was first DX'd 20 years ago and didn't know enough to ask all the questions. I know the original tumor was small, "in situ", on the right side, no nodes involved. My sister was dying then of BC because her doctor had ignored her lump until too late, and she urged me to get a modified radical and not fool around with anything else. The left breast showed calcification so we did both and did reconstruction with silicone. ( The right implant is leaking now and I would not recommend silicone to anyone! There is a soft lump the size of an apricot under that breast. ) The surgery is all that was done, then in 1990 cancer showed up in T9 and T10 vertebra and again I didn't know anything, but have had a good oncologist from the first. He put me on tamoxifen for 5 years, and shortly after that my MRI doctor wrote "healed Metastatic breast cancer" on my chart. I had done a lot of alternative things, including studying psychonueroimmunology with Dr. Carl Simonton. After the good report on the MRI scan, I sort of ignored the whole idea of cancer mets, not knowing any better, until it showed up again in lung mets, 3 smallish nodules, a year ago in June. As I've said before, they only discovered the cancer when they did a CT scan preparing me for bypass surgery because I had a heart attack June 30, 2004. This time the FISh test showed her2 (I don't believe the first 2 cancers were her2, but don't know for sure) The oncologist put me on femara, navelbine and herceptin for 6 months, then it's just been herceptin and femara since. There was a lot of fluid in my lungs at first, and I spent the month of July 2004 in the hospital while they stabilized the heart damage and watched the cancer and treated the pnuemonia which developed. In February this year I started doing Dr. Robert Young's pH miracle diet, very vegitarian, no meat, dairy or sugar, lots of veggies, some fish and soy, some fruit, and "supergreen" supplements. The PET scan was last week and shows "No Evidence of Disease", as I said. I will continue the pH diet and supplements, the femara and the herceptin. And also the positive thinking, prayer and being very vigilent this time about future mets. This website is definitely one of the "treatments" most important to me. I love reading your experiences, your courage and encouragement to each other. I don't know how I got through cancer the first two times without it! Love and best wishes, Tricia
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