Did She Have Chemotherapy?

Almost every person that I have ever told about my family member's breast cancer has asked me if she had chemotherapy. I am pretty sure that she did not - though I might be mistaken - if she did, she took the drugs for only a very short amount of time. (if she reads this blog and decides to respond, I hope she will come to the website and post her comment so everyone can see it!)

Anyway - because people ask me so often and because I had not not always understood the treatments involved in breast cancer, I wanted to take a moment to explain very briefly and Unscientifically what can happen with breast cancer.

Usually a person has a tumor and that tumor, if possible, can be cut out of the breast through surgery. Sometimes the tumor is large and the oncologist would rather address it somehow BEFORE surgery. The patient may have radiation or chemotherapy before surgery in that situation, but usually chemotherapy comes after surgery - i.e. adjuvant, if at all.

If radiation is done after surgery, it is usually because all of the tumor could not be removed or because the cancer has spread to other parts of the body. Radiation is just what you think it is. High dose Xrays. Interestingly, there is external and internal radiation. The internal involves using needles or catheters to target an area with radioactive substances instead of radiation from a machine.

Chemotherapy is also used in different ways and in different circumstances. The first thing to note is that it is not always the IV chemo that we see on TV. There are also oral medications that can be taken. What is true is that chemo and radiation can have serious, weakening side effects on the body. Chemotherapy can also be spread through the body or targeted in a certain area. It is meant to affect cancer cell proliferation either by killing cancer cells or stopping cancer cells from dividing (multiplying). Chemotherapy that is used this way (instead of surgery when the cancer is beyond the breast and lymph nodes or after surgery for the same reasons)is meant to prolong the patients life and reduce suffering if possible. If chemo is used after a mastectomy it is usually done in a two to four week cycle and is meant to kill remaining cells or prevent recurrence.

Other drugs are also used (in my loved ones case - her treatment was surgery and a hormone drug). More people have heard of tamoxifen which is an estrogen blocking drug, (but only in breast tissue), another drug class is the aromatase inhibitor which is used in post menopausal women. This drug keeps the hormone androgen from being converted to estrogen. Not all tumors are fueled or fed by estrogen however. There are other growth factors and drugs that inhibit them. The other drug I am familiar with is a HER2 protein inhibitor.

There are more drugs in clinical trials.

The American Cancer Society projected over 190,000 new female breast cancer cases for 2009 with just over 40,000 deaths. I know that sounds bad, but the new lung cancer cases for women in 2009 was estimated at just over 100,000 and over 70,000 of those cases end in death. You see, breast cancer, because it can be found early, is treatable.