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My oncologist has used the "cure" word. He actually said "we have been curing cancer for some years now." He didn't mean Her2 breast cancer. But he has patients who have been seeing him once a year for 14 years for checkups and their cancer hasn't come back. Perhaps he considers them cured. I know of a man who had kidney cancer 25 years ago and it's never come back. He considers himself cured.
In my Wellness Community Support Group, we have mostly breast cancer survivors. The majority of us consider this a chronic disease. I would like to think I'm cured, but I consider myself "vigilant."
Estro+ and Progest pos. is a good think because you can take arimidex or some other estrogen inhibitor every day to help keep the cancer from coming back. Her2 is certainly aggressive, but with Herceptin and Tykerb, we have as good a chance as anyone.
My oncologist described Her2 as "nasty" and "evil." I think that in his 20 years of practice he's had poor outcomes for Her2 Pos. patients. With the effectiveness of Herceptin Tykerb, I think he's relieved and optimiistic for his patients. He likes to see us get better, just like every other doctor.
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