Hello. I am hoping to chat with someone who has a similar experience to me and how they managed. I am 39yo with Stage 2 IBC who recently had a lumpectomy with reconstruction. My nodes came back negative, had good margins after surgery, and my OncotypeDx score came back as 22. My cancer (ER/PR +, HER2 -) is not genetic. I plan to have radiation and hormone therapy, but I’m struggling with whether or not to have chemo. I do not have to have chemo with my Oncotype score, however, at my age (39), chemo may increase my cure rate by 6.5%. I’m trying to figure out if it’s worth it or not. I do not have children, though I’d like to and have already frozen some eggs. Any words of wisdom are appreciated.
<li-spoiler>@julieluli79 - I first of all wanted to welcome you to this lovely forum, and hope you will find lots of support and answers. I had chemo because I had node involvement, so unfortunately I can’t help with your question but I’m sure others will be along soon as lots of people seem to face a similar dilemma. In the meantime you might want to search the forum, the search box is just above this thread, to the right and make sure you search the whole forum, not just this board, to access all the threads. If I can help with any questions about chemo please ask, or if there is anything else you want to ask. I wish you all the best with your decision. Evie xx</li-spoiler>
Hiya, hope you are doing ok! Such a hard time, sending a big hug…stay strong and keep your chin up, everything sounds really promising for you as it did for me! I’m glad you are weighing up your options re chemo. My score was 21 and as you will know, if you were older they would not recommend chemo. I’m 41 now and 2 yrs since I was diagnosed. My only difference was they couldn’t clear the margins, so after 3 lumpectomies they decided for a mastectomy…I had that in January 2020 after I recovered from chemo. I decided to go for chemo as I wanted to only go through this only once, so decided to hit it with everything. Started in Aug ‘19 and was finished by Nov ‘19. It wasn’t as bad as I thought, and although I was quite sick for a few days I know a lot of people just feel a bit queasy! Losing hair is the horrible part, I only needed to start wearing a wig in mid Oct when it got pretty thin, but it never all came out because I decided to use the cold cap! It was really worth it for me, and I could pretty much carry on as normal. I ended up paying for a hair piece that clipped onto the hair underneath…it was amazing as I found the wigs a bit ‘wiggy’. If you want info in that just let me know, it was a game changer for me and people were always saying how amazing my hair looked! My opinion is just go for it, grit your teeth and this will be over in no time. You are still young so your body will be fine, gets your eggs frozen - look at the chemo as an opportunity - it’s a small blip as you have a wonderful long life to look forward to, & you don’t want to be dealing with this again! I actually felt lucky to be in the position to be offered it and it gave me a bit of reassurance re blasting any residual cancer cells! 2 yrs on and I’m great and had 2 clear mammograms on my other breast. Hope this helps xxx