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I'VE BEEN STRONG UNTIL YESTERDAY AND NOW I'M JUST PLAIN SCARED!!

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  • xskeetshooter
    xskeetshooter CSN Member Posts: 169
    #22
    Eil4186 said:

    After my surgery I had a 75%
    After my surgery I had a 75% chance of my cancer not returning. Tamoxifen cut my relapse rate to almost half. Chemo only reduced my chance of relapse by 2 percent.

    2% is 2%
    any % is better then no %
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  • roseann4
    roseann4 CSN Member Posts: 992 Member
    #23
    mizcaldwell said:

    This is my first post to
    This is my first post to this site. Lola - I am in the same place. I had a small lump, found early, ER+ - and they felt radiation would be needed - not chemo. That is until the Oncotype DX score came back: 74. Yep - it's the highest score my oncologist has ever seen. I emailed the Genomic Health people - and they say the higher the number, the more aggressive the cancer. . . so while just a week ago I was debating radiation - now I'm staring chemo in the face! I am having a hard time getting my brain around it. The posts from all the other women on the site are helpful - scary and helpful. It makes it real - yet gives me hope that it is doable. I sent an email to genomic health today to find out if they have data on the survival rates of the women in their validation group - although the chemo had a positive effect on recurrence for high score women - did it change the survival rate over the group that just did the tamoxifen. If I get an answer, I'll let you all know!

    Be strong - I guess we have no other choice!

    Lori

    I asked the same question.
    Hi Lori,

    Because my score was intermediate and my tumor was 1.8, I wasn't sure whether to have chemo or not. My oco said that tamox and arimidex do reduce our risks but the onco test is for chemo. All of our risks go down with tomox and arimidex but it goes down quite a bit further with chemo for those women whose scores are high on the onco test. She put all the info into 2 different computer programs and it came out with the results that I had a 15% chance of reoccurrance which would be lowered to 12% with chemo. It is ify for the intermediate women. I would ask you onco for the stats as well as calling the lab.

    Sorry about your score but more information means more effective treatment. This test was not available until 2004.

    Roseann
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