New article by the New England Journal of Medicine Endometrial cancer

Thanks for sharing.  

And so timely!  I meet with my gyn/onc in January to discuss whether I should be doing anything beyond metformin to prevent recurrence.  I will be so glad to have this article for reference.  Thank you!

MAbound said:

Could you sum it up for us?

You can sign up for two free articles a month without a subscription. That is what I did.

Love,

Eldri

Thank you BluebirdOne for posting this article. A good state of the art on the overall current status for treatment of endometrial cancers. The take away seems to be that molecular testing of tumors is essential to determine best treatment options for both initial and reoccurrence diagnosis. Also you better have a doctor that knows about molecular tumor testing before making treatment decisions.

Molly110 said:

survival rates

Hi Denise,

You certianly have no need to apologize to me, or to anyone, for posting the link to the article. I appreciate your posts and always find them interesting and helpful. 

I know that UPSC has terrible survival odds, so bad that I almost didn't do chemo out of a sense that it was futile to try to prolong my life when what I was inevitably facing was a horrible death. I let people I love convince me to do the chemo, combined with my faith in the brilliant, warm, and compassionate gyn/onc who did my surgery and would do my chemo. Although I made it through chemo and radiation relatively easily, I live every day with the prospect of an early death. I don't kid myself, and not a day goes by that I don't both plan for the future and plan for getting my affairs in order so that they don't land on my sister after my death. I finished chemo January 10 of this year, so maybe I will have more confidence in the future if I make it through the next couple of years. But right now, the way I cope is to avoid one piece of information -- the survival odds for stage 1 UPSC. I told my doctor and care team when I decided to go through chemo that I did not want to know that, and I avoid reading articles that I think are likely to include that information.

It's on me, not you, that I read the article you linked to. From the title, I thought it wouldn't discuss survival odds, and I posted an alert as a heads up to any other woman on the board who, like me, tries to avoid that specific information. I know there are many more women who read than post, and i figured some of them may be like me.

Warm best wishes,

Molly

Molly, I too have UPSC - Stage II or III (incomplete staging) and only made it through three chemos before the side effects got the best of me. i looked at those statistics and just assumed I was going to die within the next year or so. I had put my "life" on hold to prepare for my death. But about a year after my chemo ended my oncologist/gynecologist's PA who was only 41 years old died six weeks after being diagnosed with brain cancer. I had seen her in December and she was fine but by the beginning of February she was gone. After reading her obituary, I totally changed my attitude and decided that whatever time I had left, I would "live" it and quit preparing to die.

Here I am five years later and no recurrence. I still struggle with the chemo damage but I'm alive and have a wonderful life. We sold our business of 30 years, retired, and moved to Florida. I enjoy every day! 

I know UPSC is a sneaky devil but for whatever reason, I just don't worry about it anymore. I hope you can find that same kind of peace.

Love,

Eldri

Thank you for posting this paper, Bluebird One.  I think the paper does a good job summarizing what we know about this disease. I hope we will learn a lot more in the next few years. 

BluebirdOne said:

Yes, I hear you, Molly

I am in the same boat as you, 1a UPSC, one year ahead of you being diagnosed 7/18. I am two years and a month after my last chemo, still NED. I feel exactly the same as you, many of us are in the same boat with worse initial staging. I think we all just confront our mortality as we know the odds are not great, but that is the point of the study. They used to lump all of us together instead of the current ability to determine by testing our molecular footprint. I know that I have a p53 mutation, no one can ever know when or how long I have had it, or was I born with it? I was a bit older than the typical serous post menopausal woman, dx at 67, but I observed my 70th birthday in September. Currently NED. I am fascinated (almost like a car accident) by the new studies that show the molecular classifications of UPSC, as it explains quite a bit of what puzzled me, why some with 1a did not do well, and others with 3a or even stage 4 survived. I feel exactly the way you do in that in the two years since I was dx, I have faced the fact that recurrence was pretty likely and extrapolate from there. Affairs in order, but still planting my gardens, buying furnishings for our new home. Some of us want to know, others don't and that is perfectly ok, but in the end many beat those odds and live a long time. I am optimistic I will see the oak tree we just planted grow to shade our house, but I have no idea how big it will grow before I am gone. 

xxoo

Denise 

As usual, I agree with you completely, Denise. It isn't that I don't want to know most things about this cancer. There is only one quite specific piece of information that I avoid -- the survival percentage. I have a dear friend with a more aggressive than usual form of prostate cancer, and he alerted his doctor, as I did mine, that he did not want to know his survival odds as  percentage. (Unless, the odds are 98 percent in favor of survival, I have a hard time understanding that anyone would want to know. )

I smiled at your accident analogy, which I think is perfect. 

BTW, I am 1b, not 1a, so I just think of and write about myself as stage 1. My doctor said I had just barely past 50 percent invasion, but was 1b because the tumor was in the lower part of my uterus and that increases risk of recurrence.  He seems pretty hopeful, but I think he hopes for the best for all of his patients while making sure that we have all the information we want or need to make decisions about our care. 

Thanks again,

Molly