Hello, I am new to the forum; well, I was registered many years ago and was active for a bit but then I felt that I wanted to give it a break. The reason I have reregistered now is because last week I had my 200th Herceptin treatment, and I wanted to share that with fellow secondary bc survivors because I hope that it will offer hope to others that they too could find that Herceptin works well for them. I was diagnosed with secondary bc in my bones in 2008, and started Herceptin then, having first been diagnosed with bc in 2003 which was before Herceptin was routinely offered to Her2+ patients for primary bc. So I have been receiving Herceptin for 13 years, even with a blip in 2015 when I had spread to my ovaries and fallopian tubes and had to have them out.
Although I have lived with pain for all of those years and am on reasonably strong pain medication, and get tired easily, I am otherwise well. I found in the early years that I wasn’t making medium or long term plans, thinking I just wouldn’t be around that long. And I had an 18 month daughter when I got the secondary diagnosis, and I didn’t think I would see her reach primary school, let alone where she is now, which is just finishing year 9 and going into her GCSE course in September.
I feel well and truly blessed that I have been able to spend so much time with daughter and support her growing up, and now have every reason to be confident that I will be here to help her through her GCSE exams, her A level course and her A level exams. Who knows, maybe I’ll even still be here when she goes to Uni in around 4 years’ time, and in fact I have actually started to plan and dream how I will spend my time once she leaves home.
Apart from wanting to prove to others that it is possible to live for many years with a secondary bc diagnosis, the other reason I wanted to write this post was to find out how many other people had crossed that 200-Herceptin milestone? I would love to hear from you if you have, and maybe Breast Cancer Now would be interested in writing an article on us. I think it is a huge deal to have had that many treatments and it deserves to be celebrated. (I did take a little bottle of bubbly into my 200th treatment session and shared it with my nurse!)
Big hug to all
Alison