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Posted by Penny on November 6, 2009, 3:17 pm, in reply to "triple negative / parp"
You're not alone in having your stats change on you Honey. I went from pr+/her2+ to trip neg after my second recur. My onc said it happens in about 30% of patients who recur. Cancer has a tendancy to get more resistant after each type of tx. If we deprive it of the hormones it was feeding on, it will learn to live without them. All this means is that the hormone therapies like herceptin and tamoxofin won't work for us now.
The parp inhibitor is a new therapy that is still in the clinical trial stage but does show promise. You can find more info on the trial at www.cancer.gov, then search for clinical trials and put the word "parp" in the keyword spot. They are using this drug in trip neg pts along with gemzar which kicks me out of the trial cause I've already done gemzar with carbo.
Like the gals above, I don't understand why you would need to wait to start chemo either. I do understand the need to wait a couple of months to do another pet. The area that has been radiated needs time to heal completely before a pet is done or it will show up false positives in that area. This may also be the reason your onc wants to wait on chemo. Chemo slows down your ability to heal and he/she may just want to give you some time to heal up before starting chemo.
Even if the surgeon and onc believe that all the cancer was removed with surgery, there is no guarantee that every single cell was removed, (which is why we do chemo & rads after a successful surgery the first time around) and I would be wanting chemo to take care of anything that might have been left behind this time as well. It's definitely worth asking about or getting a second opinion on.
I hope this info helps you some and please do feel free to post as often as you like with any questions, concerns or whatever is on your mind. We're all here to help each other out Sweetie.
Hugs,
Penny
Orig. dx 05/2004
Stage IV dx 01/2008
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