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I have NOT been following your posts and am not a sufferer, but have done quite a lot of very amateur reading on the general subject, and these are things that have struck me.
I must emphasise that every one is different and this disease appears to be more and more a disease that is subtly different in every patient.
The following have struck me in my wanders;
1. Cancers take up to ten years to develop, which suggests on the AVERAGE you do not need to panic, and have a sensible time frame in which to make treatment decisions without compomising you position to any significant extent.
2. Resistance CAN develop to chemo treatments which has two implications - the cell has mutated to avoid the impact of the treatment - and that is one more treatment off the protection list.
3. If you can afford them/ have access to them diagnostic tools are improving MRI CAT etc.
4. Various tumour markers are available to try and give you an idea what is happening in your body.
5. Chemo can have implications the immune system etc.
6. Chemo has been shown to have very positive results.
7. Local and bilateral recorrence can be treated. Spread to the rest of the body is the real problem. Cancer that has spread may not be the same as the original.
8. Statisitics are hard to find an pin down, but it is important to kep an eye on survival, as several treatments help with local spread but have not been shown to make a huge difference to survival.
9. It is reported that we all have potentially cancerous cells in our body - it is a question of the bodies ability to deal with them.
10 Check out the "life extension" site where they have some interesting thoughts on steps to take as part of a decision process.
11. Life style factors can influence risk. My personal crusade is to get people to balance their omega threes and sixes, and take some fish oil for the DHA EPA as the body is not very good at it. Women may need it more than men. If nothing else it is established and accepted that it will help with cardiovascular health, which is pretty fundamantal, and because so much of the bodies mechano appears to be similar bits used in different ways.
The decision must be yours. It must be hugely difficult. As an outsider it seems to me that you need to inform yourself as much as you can before taking the decsions you take to try and minimise the what if's and if only's afterwards.
There is lots of information on this site. Talk to your adviser on the impact of a short delay to allow you time to sort things out. Try checking out soms books in the library.
Re tamoxifen there is suggestion that it may be contraindicative for those that express high Cyclin D1. There are posts on this site you may want to check out and show to your adviser referring to trials. (use search engine)
It does take a little while and quite a lot of reading to begin to get a wider perspective on which a decision might be based.
I would reiterate that these are only general observations that have particularly struck me and no more.
So difficult for you
RB
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