Have extensive liver mets,bone mets in pelvis,hips and spine.
Only been on Palbociclib Letrozole for 3 months early scan which was taken on cycle 2,(missed to weeks due to low white cells)
scan now shows some liver mets smaller,but one has got bigger,mets in bone only one area got bigger.They say will give me another scan in 6 weeks time,and it will give them a bette4 idea and that I will have been on the treatment for over my 3 cycles.Onocoligist thinking chemo if mets not got smaller.Can anyone tell my straight to chemo and not another targeted therapy.So confused.i am scared I have no choices but to have chemo,only.
I’m sorry to hear this. I can quite see why you’re anxious. I cant really say anything particularly helpful apart from that I’m thinking of you. You need to trust your oncologist I suppose but it’s difficult x
hi thinking of you and sending positive vibes, is palbociclib the same as ribociclib as i also had to miss 2 weeks due to low blood cells and am on cycle 3 so wondered if this is a common occurrence x
I’ve replied to your question on another thread but I just wanted to add that the reason you often go from a hormonal treatment to a chemo treatment can be when some mets are not responding well to hormonal treatment. Chemo tends to give a more rapid response (after all it’s a much tougher regime) and can get things under control quicker. It doesn’t mean this rules out having hormonal treatment in future, it will all depend on how you respond to different treatments.
I was diagnosed in November 2018 with ER+ stage 4 after my spine fractured. I have Mets in Spine (mostly lower thoracic area), sternum, soft tissue in chest wall where original tumour was removed (left side), left hip and pelvis. I am 50. I have had rads to spine and left pelvis, as well as spinal decompression surgery.
After all the doom and gloom I felt a bit more upbeat about my prognosis as my oncologist got the funding through for Palboclbib which I started end January 2019, alongside Letrozole. My onc said that the treatment could give me one, possibly two years, disease free progression… The
Ist 3 month scan was inconclusive in bony mets areas as to whether it was working, and showed I also have primary papillary thyroid carcinoma. My last scan about 2 weeks ago conclusively confirmed progression in all bone areas, with new Mets in right hip too - I half expected this as I have had significant increase in Mets pain recently.
My nurse told me that the letrozole failed, the Palboclbib is designed to boost the letrozole and make it last longer and hopefully give patients more time before cancer becomes resistant to the treatment. Obviously in my case I had less than 6 months before it failed.
I see my onc on Wednesday but my nurse has said I have one of two possible other hormone treatment s before we go down chemo route - fortunately at the moment there is no evidence of disease in lungs or liver.
I will let you know what the next plan is. I have read that sometimes having a break, doing chemo and then coming back to the hormone treatment works better. But I’m not sure how true this is. I will push my oncologist for an answer on this as I am worried about my options being limited as treatment has failed so quickly.
I hope you get some answers and a plan going forward asap and I hope, whatever it is, that it works for you and slows this horrible disease down a bit. Thinking of you x