What now ?

I was diagnosed in Dec 07 with hormone based Breast cancer with mets to 6 places in the bones & in the left lung - for 3.5 mos I was just on Arimidex which shrunk everything in the breast but needed to move on to chemo after the scans showed more clusters in the lung & 2 more bone mets.  The chemo is Taxol 190 & Avastin & Aredia (once a month) - my cycles are 3 wks on - 1 wk off;  I just have one more cycle to go & they will do scans to see how I have progressed.  My question is - what next - they say I will be on chemo on & off the rest of my life.  What do I take in between; how long before I do the next chemo treatment; could this be a stage 4 that I might live for 15 years - if so, can you do chemo for that many years?

[melissa_montellano]

hi debb,

chemotherapy for metastatic breast is usually classified as 1st-line, 2nd-line, 3rd-line, etc. the interval between chemotherapy is usually measured by how long your cancer progresses or relapses. since your cancer is receptor positive, you will be probably taking Arimidex in between your chemotherapy treatments, since this drug is recommended to be used for 5 years. in clinical trials, survival for breast cancer is usually measured by 5-year survival rates. you should ask your doctor about Taxol, Avastin, and Aredia and ask what data these drugs produce in terms of survival rates.

hope this helps