I have been reading the chemo forums and am amazed at how young many of the contributors are. My mother-in-law is 80 this year and has been diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer. She has had her first dose of chemo, some not too nice side effects and a week in hospital with infection. I think she is giving up, she has come from the generation who did not share personal information and finds it difficult to talk about. I put her on to these forums as I thought she might draw from the positivity that comes from here, however she says they all have their lives to look forward to and she has had hers. I think she may get to the stage where she refuses treatment. Her only grandaughter is getting married next year and we are trying to encourage her to be well for that but so far not much faith in the medical world. Are there any other elderly chemo patients out there?
Hello Longj,
So sorry to read of your mother-in-law’s diagnosis, it must be very difficult for her to come to terms with all this, and to feel incredibly isolated. I think part of the reason so many of us on here are ‘young’ is that we are the social network generation(s) plus many of us found that during treatment everyone we met was a lot older than us. For all that, there are some inspiring and very computer literate more mature ladies who post on here, and several wonderful stories from people whose elderly relatives (up to age 100) have been successfully treated for bc. I will have a look around the ‘advanced search’ facility and then post any useful links I find for you.
Edit: here are a couple of threads…
share.breastcancercare.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=34885&p=611486#p611486
share.breastcancercare.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=34899&p=611854&hilit=+older+women#p611854
Hope they are of some help
If you use the 'advanced search thing share.breastcancercare.org.uk/forum/search.php you can use key words to try to find something more relevant.
Thank you so much for the links, I will pass them on xxx
Hi Longj007,I am 78 in May and found my lump on my 77th birthday last May,I had Lobular BC was given Femara to shrink the tumour and then had a Mastectomy and node removal in August,36 nodes removed 28 were positive,I had to push for chemo because of my age,I wanted to throw everything at it including chewing the altar rails at my local Parish Church.Chemo was pretty horrible although my dosage was only at 80% strength,3 weeks after chemo I had Radiotherapy every day for 5 weeks.At the Radiotherapy hospital I becames friends with several other patients ,3 of them there daily were 91,88,and 76 respectively,we all became quite proud of being the golden oldies in our range of elegant wigs.throughout this experience the care given by all medical staff has been excellent,except when I had to push for Chemotherapy,but even then I didnt have to push too hard.These forums are amazing in support,I belong to the group Starting chemo in August, and we are meeting up with each other in April,there is a thread for post menopausal women.
Love and Light xx Mavis