Need some advice - encouragement

I'm going to sound like an echo here, but it really sounds like you need a second opinion in another facility. If THAT doctor agrees with the first one, it might give you better peace of mind. It is so, so hard to believe many sites and studies, because many don't use adequate samples, use old data (even the survival statstics on this site use much older data. I was surprised at that! This data is more than 15 years old, and it isn't easy finding newer data, since ten and even fifteen year data are often taken into account, so you'd indeed be at 2002/2003 and out, when procedures for the Type IIs were dramatically different. Great!) Oh ... and many downright contradict each other. The Type IIs are particularly at the bad end of this. There aren't as many of us, and we aren't the golden children of research, so good studies aren't easy to find.

I have this awful feeling that whichever facility I choose for my surgery, both are major teaching and testing facilities that publish reams of studies and research documents, and both are looking at me with keen interest for research because I'm such an outlier specimen, as are several ladies here. 

I mean, that's PROBABLY not the case, but just because I'm paranoid ...

Anyway, I'd go with the second opinion. If you don't feel confident, that will not help your outcome.

cindy0519 said:

Probably should have pointed

Probably should have pointed out that UPSC is my second cancer.  I was running 40 plus miles a week, eating clean, and the healthiest I had been in years when I was diagnosed with breast cancer and then USPC a mere four months later in the fall of 2015. I have tried numerous forms of alternative medicine and continue to try new altenatives that minimize the poision I am subjecting my body too. I firmly believe that some mix of alternative medicine and modern medicine is the best way to go. The challenge is...finding the right balance for my cancers. When I say “do nothing approach” I am referring to my Onco reference to chemo - nothing more.   

I sought a second, and even a third opinion, before proceeding with frontline treatment and up until now have been very comfortable with my Oncos recommendations. I’m not even sure I question her now as much I wonder if I am just letting anxiety about the unknown take over. I posted here hoping someone else has been in this spot and could share their experience with getting through it.  

You probably haven't had any genomic testing done yet, have you?  I had 6 mutations when mine was done, and the four drugs that had been used successfully in some of my mutations had been used for other types of cancer besides UPSC.  My oncologist told me that the drugs were expensive and since they hadn't been approved for UPSC, he was sure that no insurance would be willng to pay for them. But then I was contacted by another member of this board, who reads medical journals.  She told me that she had found that a diabetes drug, Metformin, was known to work on four of my mutations.  She was taking it herself.  I have started on it (in spite of not being diabetic), and it's too soon to know results yet, but I'm hoping that between that and the Turmeric/Curcumin I'm taking now, I won't get this cancer back at all or I'll have a longer remission.  I've had UPSC twice, in 2010 and 2017, and I was originally stage IVb at diagnosis.  My GYN/onc. acted like he thought I'd get it back again in five years or so after my chemo ended in Sept., so I'm hoping these drugs will help.  The PA at my family doctor's office had read some of the studies and had put other patients on Metformin prior to prescribing it to me.  He said he was willing to prescribe it to his "more informed" patients.  It requires a little extra bloodwork to check for kidney problems and low blood sugar levels, but if it works, it'll be worth it.  I started out on half a 500 mg. pill for a month and then upped it to two half pills a day, morning and evening, after the first month.  It should be taken on a full stomach to avoid nausea.  The person who recommended it to me and some other people on this website say it doesn't work on everyone, but it may work for you if you have certain mutations. 

Let's face it, if you're like most of us, you'll probably worry about a recurrence the rest of your life, so maybe taking something like this might lessen your anxiety a little. 

I'm currently in remission for the second time.  In 2010, I had Carboplatin and Taxol.  In 2017, I had Carboplatin and Gemzar (with low blood counts) then switched to Cisplatin and Gemzar for the last treatment after having an allergic reaction to Carboplatin.  My GYN/onc. was surprised I went into remission so quickly.

I found at least one research from 2015 that studies the effect of Avastin together with Femara. Dont think there is any adverse drug-drug interaction.

The women were randomly assigned to get either:

• Femara alone (2.5 mg per day)
• Femara plus Avastin (15 mg/kg every 3 weeks)

Femara is a pill, usually taken once per day. Avastin is given intravenously, which means it is dripped into your body through a needle inserted into a vein.

After slightly more than 3 years of follow-up, the researchers found that women who got Femara plus Avastin had better progression-free survival than women who got only Femara:

• progression-free survival was 20 months for women who got Femara plus Avastin
• progression-free survival was 16 months for women who got Femara alone

This difference was statistically significant, which means that it was likely due to the difference in treatment rather than just because of chance.