I have another question

[chrisy]

Dear Susan,
Perfectly natural to have your head spinning and to be scared. But remember, you want to give yourself the best chance possible to beat this for good and NEVER have to deal with it again in the future. You said your doctor recommended the chemo - how do you feel about this doctor? Do you trust him/her?
Her2+++ is a sneaky cancer and with chemo plus Herceptin, you have a better chance to knock it out for good. It's up to you how aggressively you want to fight this disease.
Don't be afraid of the chemo - I think you had many responses to your earlier post that chemo is "doable", and it will be for you, too, if this is your decision.
One other thought - you can always stop it at any time. Maybe try it for on he 29th, see how you feel. You can always stop.

[RobinP]

Unfortunately, there no studies on Herceptin alone as adjuvant therapy in early stage disease. However, there are studies done on the mets population that indicates that chemo plus Herceptin is more effective than chemotherapy alone. So for right now that standard of care for her2 positive bc is Herceptin and chemo, anything less would be sub standard care. Personally, I would have a hard time doing a sub standard treatment for an aggressive bc like her2 positive that was hormonal negative. Not to alarm you but, breast cancer that is er,pr negative is usually very aggressive, growing faster and spreading readily. You might look at breastcancer.org and look up hormonal negative in the search in order to see just how effective chemotherapy is in particularly hormonal negative bc.

[Dianaq]

Do you know what the studies are with just chemo alone vs. heceptin alone?