1 week left of chemo and been excepted for Herceptin
1 week left of chemo and been excepted for Herceptin I hope you are all doing well!
I just wanted to share with you all my news I had chemo today and my last one will be next week I am sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo happy it will all be over soon. I also had some news yesterday that I have been excepted for Herceptin so I will start that after the 5 weeks of Radio. I was hoping they would let me have a break in the summer and start it in September but they wont. It is strange I should be happy that I can have Herceptin but Im not I cant stand the thought of having to go back to hospital every week for 90 mins and have more drips. Even after having chemo you would think I would have got use to the needles but I am still terrified and have to have the emla cream so i can not feel the needle.
Well just wanted to share my news with you all how are all of you well I hope?
Love clairemm x x x x
Double check Hi Claire,
Are you sure that you are on weekly herceptin rather than herceptin every three weeks? Herceptin every week is U.S. general practice, but here in the UK it is generally given every three weeks, mainly because different trials are followed. However, herceptin stays in the body for more than three weeks after a dose is given and it is believed that there is not much difference between once a week versus every three weeks, so even in the U.S. some women do get it just once every three weeks.
A year of herceptin is a palaver, but unfortunately they haven’t done the research necessary to get rid of the tail (there is one phase III trial and a new phase II trial that show that it can be highly effective when just given with chemo, but they are two small and too early), so for the moment we will just have to endure it. The nice thing about herceptin is that although it has some side effects these are not at all in the same league as chemo and one can have a life during it and (since it is more effective that normal chemo) and has a greater chance of a long life after it.
herceptin Hi Clairemm,
I went to visit the onco last week and find that I am HER2 positive and have been offered Herceptin. Like you I should be very happy that I can have what the onco described as a “dream drug”. I am really grateful that this drug is available and that I don’t have to fight for it. However I did hope that I would now be able to have a fairly normal life with arimidex and adcal which actually is OK (started 2 weeks ago).
Well I was wrong and start Herceptin, three weekly from next week. Once more filled with anxiety over the treatment - as women say on some of the other threads life after bc diagnosis is never the same again.
Others on this site seem to have had mixed experience of Herceptin as with all the other nasty noxious potions that give us hope.
Scouring the site for Herceptin stories now, after the first marathon session, is it a 90 min infusion and a 2 hour wait to ensure no nasty reactions each time?
Hope all goes well with you claire, I will let you know how I get on.
LOL
jamie
Be prepared to wait Oh dear, I hate to be the bearer of bad news but for the first session you may have to wait around as long as six hours after the infusion, so be prepared. The reason for this is that the NHS is very concerned about anyone developing an allergic reaction and this can occur as much as six hours later. I had my first session privately and they were quite happy to let me lose after an hour and a half, but I suppose the NHS is more cautious. The later sessions can be administered in as little as 90 minutes, but, at least at my NHS hospital, the waits always seem very long.
Aside from the time consuming infusions, I haven’t had that many problems with herceptin. I’m not quite my normal self, but I still manage to have a fairly active life and it is 100 times better than chemo. It is also highly effective at at least improving disease free survival and possibly at improving survival.
O.k., I am not terribly thrilled with this one year of herceptin nonsense, but there’s not much one can do, aside from making sure the oncologists know we want a shorter treatment, which isn’t as loopy as it sounds. A recent phase II trial of 48 stage III women given herceptin + taxotere + cisplatin before surgery followed by adriamycin + cyclophosphamide afterwards found that 83% of them were disease-free forty-three months later and only one had developed congestive heart failure during the trial (at 2% this is possibly about as safe as the HERA trial). See link below for the story, which appeared in a recent Journal of Clinical Oncology.
med.miami.edu/news/view.asp?id=539
Herceptin + carboplatin + taxotere may be even better ( 7 out of 8 stage III women had complete responses in the phase one trial and remained disease-free one year later). These results are astounding.
The problem is that it is not clear who would fund such as trial. There is no big commercial incentive since the only drugs these regimes contain that are not already used for breast cancer, cisplatin and carboplatin, have been around for so long that they no longer have patent protection. Still, I think it is important to make it known that herceptin patients, although thankful for herceptin, would like a shorter treatment to help us get on with our lives.
We can’t do anything to shorten the treatment for ourselves, but perhaps we can improve things for later patients.
Herceptin Hi! I am on my last dose of Herceptin so have done the chemo, then radiotherapy and herceptin for 12 months. Actually the herceptin has been fine -yes it is a pain to go in every three weeks but as the side effects are so minimal its not so bad. I got mild sneezing/cold symptoms after each dose for about 24-48 hours. Had to have regular echos to check left ventricular function every six weeks.
I have terrible veins , but the herceptin doesnt seem to affect them so rotating the sites has worked. ( I needed a port before).
More of a worry is I feel “treatment dependant” now - I have not had any time away from hospitals, check ups etc for 18 months - I kind of feel I have to now face up to the waiting game.
thanks HI room 9,
Thanks for your positive and very helpful message. I am off to have my first dose of Herceptin on Tuesday. Your story will help me to be a bit calmer.
I am sure I will be ok once I start. I was just as anxious before my six months of Chemo and the Arimadex, but every thing bearable so far.
Enjoy your liberation from hospital,
Jamie
first dose done Hi Everyone,
Just back from my first dose of Herceptin. I saw the oncologist first and then had treatment. It took 90mins as expected and I had to wait in the treatment room for 90 mins afterwards.
All in all I was in the hospital for 4 hours, not bad at all. An excitement in the middle of treatment was the fire alarm which was not a test. Picture us all carrying our IV stands down stairs and out in to the car park. Fortunately it was a beautiful sunny day.
Ah… such is life.
Good news is that I feel fine, a little shivery but no really bad side effects so far. Long may it continue.
We are so fortunate to have such amazing treatments, I am feeling much more positive now.
warmest regards to all
Jamie