Ugly facts

These are from our notes taken during our meeting yesterday:
- 60% chance that the cancer will reoccur elsewhere within 3 years
- no cure for reoccurring breast cancer. We didn't believe that but found it substantiated at the US cancer site:
www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/wyntk/breast/page4 It's under the topic of "Recurrent Breast Cancer".

That is an ugly combination of facts.

- 7 of the 19 lymphnodes removed were cancerous. The largest tumour there was 1.2 cm. Any more then 5 lymphnodes involved is judged to be serious.
- Carolin's main breast tumour was 4.5 cm. At five cm she would have been bumped up to the next stage of cancer (a bad thing).
- her tumour is sensitive to estrogen and progesteron. The sensitivity was rated 3 out of 8, but that's good as there are drugs that can block a tumour's use of those two and "starve" it.

What tumour? Well there can be microscopic cancer cells floating around in her that are looking for places to settle down and grow tumours. The next round of chemo (Taxol) is suppose to kill them (same as the last bout was to kill them). The likeliest places for it to reoccur is liver, lungs, and bone. How do they know if the cancer has come back? The answer left us confused. The regular checkups (every 3 months) didn't seem to involve anything fancier than a tongue depressor. I think we missed something....so more, later.