percentage of those who respond to Herceptin

candlegranny · 05-19-2011, 08:29 PM

I just finished my year of herceptin. I asked my oncologist monday what was my chances of reoccurence. He said with more than 10 lymph nodes being involved and by completeing one year of herceptin my chances of reoccurance had decreased 30%. He said my changes of reoccrence before herceptin was 80% and to make it easy math we would use 75% and with the third percentage improvement i was looking at 50%chance it would come back. i looked at it as 50% chance it would not come back. my radiologist says i have increased my chances of it not comeing back by doing radiatoin and he says maybe only 30% it will return. I am a bit confused on all this. but i am very glad they have not told me it WILL come back. my oncologist also told me with a year of herceptin it takes care of the over espression of hte cells and makes me like anyone that had breast cancer that was not her 2 neu. aNyone been told that before? My oncologist wanted to see me every 4 months but i asked for every 3 months and he agreed. I will have a PET scan and a MUGA scan before i see him in august.

05-20-2011, 09:46 AM

Candlegranny

You look and sound wonderful. I finished by herceptin in October. See my oncologist in July.
I see either my surgeon or oncologist every 3 months. I am almost 2 years NED. I believe I will continue to be NED. You have to have positive thinking no matter what - and believe me before the cancer most of my friends would have said I saw the glass half empty. Now I see it glass half full every morning I wake up.

Mar16 · 05-20-2011, 04:02 PM

V-ness,
Thanks. I was at stage 2b. So glad to hear your tests have been clean. I hope I will be saying the same in the future.

Wanted to ask, when you went to just getting the herceptin, did you have a lot of different side effects? I was reading some posts yesterday of people that had problems when they went to just the herceptin. Just wondering.

Thank you for your response.