One woman with Metaplastic Breast Cancer emailed me a few weeks ago. She was on our Facebook group but decided to leave just over a year ago. Leaving the group, joining the group leaving and joining .... is very common. Cancer is about different emotions and women deal with it in any way they can. We are just happy when we can support.
Anyway, back to the point. She wanted to share her pathology with me. I was always concerned because she had chemo first. But after she explained her pathology - I understood. She is triple positive metaplastic breast cancer.
Not only this but she was also matrix producing. This is a very rare combination. But also fascinating because she is doing very well 2 years after cancer.
I decided to do a poll and find out how many of our girls were triple positive or had hormone positive metaplastic breast cancer.
The results were interesting. Approximately 5% of our girls have some hormone positive metaplastic breast cancer (I am including girls who have left the group and one lady who died). However, completely triple postitive is rarer. Another very rare combination is ER+ and PR+.
The pattern that is emerging is that women with any form of hormone positivity are being offered chemo first. This is interesting and so far, it seems to be working. We have only lost one girl with ER+ and PR+ cancer. It was very sad - but she failed to get treatment early enough. Once again, the aggressive form of MBC rears its ugly head if it is not treated immediatley. So, even though chemo first does seem to work - I still advocate surgery for anyone that isn't hormone positive or had Stage 3 cancer.
The more advanced you are - the more aggressive you have to be.
More information on Metaplastic Breast Cancer can be found here:
http://www.metaplasticbreastcancer.net
Sure early detection is not a cure by any stretch, but it sure can save your life
http://cancerstricken.com/can-breast-cancer-be-cured
Posted by: Mabel | February 27, 2014 at 05:23 AM
My wife (age 68) back in Dec of 2012 was diagnosed with Stage 4 ER+ breast cancer. One node and a small spot on the spine. After 3 infusions of AC she was clean except for the 6 cm tumor in her breast. The oncologist said since the cancer was responding well to estrogen blocker (aromasin) it was best to leave it be.
A little over a year later, Nov 2014 the cancer morphed and went crazy. She had a radical mastectomy and breast removal. A biopsy showed it to be ER+ and the oncologist prescribed tamoxifen. 19 lymph nodes were removed and 9 of the 19 had triple negative Metaplastic keratinized squamous carcinoma. A PET scan done after the surgery showed some cancer still in her armpit, probably spill over from the nodes. She's back on A-C again, no Taxol as she almost died from it earlier. One good point, she had intense pain in her rt armpit for about 10 minutes; maybe it was from the cancer being killed.
She has two cancers, one ER+ PR+ HER2- and another triple negative.
Posted by: Mike Walsh | February 23, 2015 at 02:29 AM