my left breast, that is...
I read an 2004 account of Elizabeth Edward's breast cancer. They did chemo for her first, then surgery followed by radiation.
That isn't what I'm doing -- I'm surgery first, then chemo and probably no radiation, because they don't have a tumor or breast to focus on. I'm glad the whole breast is gone. Sure, it would have been nice to save it -- but, I'm glad I'm not walking around with a tumor.
I know cancer treatments are complex and vary by the kind of cancer and the person. I suppose in Edward's case they wanted to start chemo right away to limit the spread -- since she had lymph nodes involved as well... and you can't do chemo while you are recovering from surgery.
So, in the end, I should be happy that I don't have to have the surgery after the chemo -- when I'm bald and tired...
and -- I'm glad the breast with the tumor is in a lab someplace and no longer connected to me!!
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I can see why you would prefer the series of treatment you're having opposed to the other way around.
I would imagine it's really hard to recover from surgery after having chemo for a while, so it seems as though it would be easier to recover a bit from surgery before starting with the chemo.
I wish you the best of luck with your treatment.
and... last night I was doing some reading -- and what I gathered was that the chemo first plan is for situations worse than my own -- especially when the they want to reduce the size of the tumor before surgery...
Personally, when my oncologist told me that there is no visible cancer in my body, it felt really good. The point of the chemo is to clean out any microscopic bits of cancer before they get a chance to become established...
Also, my clinical trial is using a drug they use on metastatic breast cancer -- so, I'm kind of getting extra-credit chemo :).
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