Breast Cancer Now Podcast S7 E6 - Understanding a triple negative breast cancer diagnosis (Nikki Wheatley)

Coffee Lounge Chat and inspiration
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Morning everyone

The latest episode of the Breast Cancer Now podcast has landed!

I hope you all enjoy this amazing chat between Laura and Nikki Wheatley, who lives with metastatic triple negative breast cancer.

All the best. x

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Personal stories like these are so helpful. I also became stage 4 through blood transfer and I think it’s an underrated risk, certainly for grade 3 TNBC

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I agree. My breast surgeon did briefly mention the possibility of spread via routes other than the usual lymph node “staircase” when explaining the role of adjuvant chemo to me back in the earlier days of my TNBC journey, but it didn’t really register like it did when I started hearing of this from real life stage 4 TNBC patients.

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Vascular invasion was mentioned when I had my post surgery results appointment. When I pushed for how much this affected my risk, I couldn’t get a clear answer. “It’s grade 3 tnbc so it’s high risk anyway”. A few months later I had a CT scan following an infection during chemo, and a liver met was an unexpected finding. It had doubtless been there before my surgery. At that point my oncologist wondered whether they should scan high risk tnbc at the start. A point the interviewee also makes.

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I’m actually familiar with your story through the Macmillan online community, @Coddfish. I’m on there too under the username MsC19754c and your experience and knowledge have been and continue to be extremely valuable to me in navigating my own situation. Thank you.

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Yes I had surmised you were the same person due to the similarities in what you have posted on both sites. I spend more time on the other site since the powers that be there asked me to become a community champion! When I was first diagnosed there were a couple of other ladies with secondary tnbc using this site. Sadly they both dropped away. I hope they are living happy stable lives but somehow doubt it. I think we are both very lucky to have qualified for pembro. Nikki is a real outlier as a survivor who hasn’t benefited from pembro.

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