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Michele - Did you never get any chemo AT ALL? Or just that now you're on herceptin post chemo as a stand alone (which is the protocol for the trials). The women at MD Anderson (which, as far as I know, was the only neoadjuvent study that is going on right now) knew their response to herceptin because they could monitor the tumor shrinkage and see. Just like any woman that gets chemo prior to surgery and often they see at least some shrinkage. With people like you & me, they "cut" all the visible cancer out, so there's no way of knowing whether chemo, herceptin, or anything is working for us, until we go XXX number of years without a recurrance. Even then, it's just an assumption. I don't think we know LT survival stats for herceptin, especially for early stage bc, as it's only been approved for Stage IV for 6 years. But we DO know that it makes a difference for many women that are Stage IV, and the early results are promising for earlier stages.
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