Happy Friday friends! Wishing you all a wonderful weekend ahead, and wishing me a snoozy cozy chemo sesh today!
Today is round 7 and it’s my third THP session. As a reminder:
T is for Taxol, which is the chemotherapy drug that kills the cancer cells
HP is for Herceptin+Perjeta, the two targeted immunotherapy drugs that kill them just a bit more
Every 3rd week I get HP because of my specific subtype of breast cancer, which is HER2 positive.
Hello from my chemo chair! Today is round 7.
Quick update on how we are doing this week:
➖ Had another ultrasound to check in on Larry the Lump and am super delighted that he has shrunk even more since the last time! Compared to pre-chemo, the lump is now 55% smaller (measured by the sum of 3 dimensions).
➖ My hair is still holding on!
➖ Blood cell counts are all above target! 🎯
➖ Turns out last week’s energy slump was not a one-off, and chemo fatigue is now here to stay. But I’m learning to manage my energy better (and put less stuff on my to-do lists).
Thank you to everyone who keeps checking in on me or sending me hugs, recipes, Cat of the Week photos/videos and memes, as well as thinking good vibes from the universe in my direction! 🙏✨❤️ I am so very very grateful for all the support! 🥰
We’re halfway through October, Breast Cancer Awareness month. A few days ago, October 13, was Secondary Breast Cancer Awareness day, which is a difficult, but very important aspect of BC I wanted to talk about today.
Secondary breast cancer
Advanced breast cancer
Metastatic breast cancer
Stage 4 breast cancer
Incurable breast cancer
It goes by many names, but this is essentially the really scary bit about breast cancer, and why early detection is so very, very important.
What you need to know is that having cancer cells in the breast tissue is not what kills people with breast cancer. 100% of deaths from breast cancer comes from secondary breast cancer.
Primary breast cancer is the original tumour where the cancer started. Sometimes it spreads out of the breast tissue into the nearby lymph nodes. With chemotherapy, radiation, targeted treatments and surgery, most primary breast cancers are treatable and curable.
When the cells from a breast cancer tumour spread to distant parts of the body, like the lungs or the bones, they do not become lung cancer or bone cancer. The new tumour is still made up of breast cancer cells. They are still breast cancer, but now it is secondary.
At this point in time, there is no cure for secondary breast cancer. With chemotherapy, radiation, targeted treatments and sometimes surgery, secondary breast cancer can be treated, but it cannot be cured.
Read that again: it cannot be cured.
Treatment for secondary breast cancer is aimed at controlling the cancer, slowing it down or keeping it stable and thus helping the patient maintain a good quality of life for as long as the treatment is working.
There is no data aggregating the total number of secondary breast cancer patients in the world, nor are there unified statistics regarding how many primary breast cancer patients will develop secondary breast cancer as well.
Taking the UK as an example though, there are currently:
➖ 600,000 people who have received a breast cancer diagnosis at some point in the past,
➖ 35,000 people living with secondary breast cancer,
➖ 11,500 dying of secondary breast cancer every year = that’s 31 people every day.
It is currently estimated that for all women diagnosed with early stage breast cancer, 30% will develop metastatic breast cancer at some point. This is in no way related to how “well they fought” against primary breast cancer, or if they followed their treatment “the right way”.
3 out of 10 women diagnosed with early stage breast cancer will go on and develop metastatic, incurable breast cancer through no fault of their own.
It’s shit luck and bad biology, nothing else.
The 5-year survival rate with secondary breast cancer is about 25%.
The median life expectancy - 3 years.
Around 5-8% of breast cancer diagnosis are “de novo” secondary, meaning they are already secondary at the time of diagnosis. This is especially true for young women, who statistically are diagnosed at a more advanced stage than older women, due to increased difficulty in imaging diagnostics and due to a lower awareness of the risk of developing breast cancer at a young age.
This is the reason why early detection of breast cancer is so very VERY fucking important.
7 out of 10 women diagnosed with early stage breast cancer will not develop secondary breast cancer.
7 in 10 women diagnosed with early stage breast cancer will not go on to develop metastatic breast cancer.
Early detection does not guarantee curing breast cancer or preventing it from coming back, but it really helps increase those odds.
It’s still Breast Cancer Awareness month. Last week 35% of you still hadn’t self-examined / signed up for a check-up. Is the information I shared today enough to change your mind?
Signing off with a picture of Larry the Lump, who is really getting smashed with THP from all sides right about now:
Oh no, poor Larry the Lump getting smashed with THP. Sorry not sorry. Fuck you Larry.