[michele u]

Jen,

This is my opinion only... being stage 3 myself and having 35 pos nodes, they told me my recurrence risk is 80% at 10yr. I will do anything and everything to stop this statistic. Yes, the Herceptin for stage 3 has really changed our outcomes, but how long? We don't have the data for 10 year yet. the 5 year is looking really good. You are hormone positve and can take something, i'm hormone neg. Tykerb is oral, and the side effects mostly are grade one. Meaning things like diarrhea and rash. They will probably only do trials for women that havent taken Herceptin, just because they want to get the market away from Herceptin. They stopped the stage 4 trials just like they did with Herceptin and are giving it everyone in the study they were doing. That means, it must be working. EVERYONE is trying to get their hands on this. It is supposed to fight against Her1 and Her2. Her1 is also EGFR. I know my EGFR is weakly positive. My Her2 FISH is 10. I can't take any hormone, that is why i'm so excited about Tykerb. It will end up being our hormone neg's Tamoxifen I think. To have a piece of mind, i will take the rash and diarrhea for a while.