Inflammatory Breast Cancer

My wife has been diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer about 1 1/2 weeks ago. She noticed a large lump about a month earlier but it took awhile to get in to the doctor. The tumor has been measured at 6 cm (though it may have grown recently to 8 cm). The pathology reports indicate that it has very likely metastasized to the axillary lymph nodes as well. Bone and Cat scans indicate no mets anywhere else detectable yet. A needle biopsy was performed indicating the cells are poorly differentiated.  She begin chemotherapy (adiamycin and cytoxan) immediately.  So far she is still feeling fine. How long can we hope for this to continue?

[CCF-RN,MSN-JS]

Dear bear601,  Inflammatory breast cancer is staged as a Stage 3B cancer.  It is generally regarded as inoperable at first.  However, after pretreatment with chemotherapy, most will become operable.  If a good response is obtained with chemotherapy surgery is used to remove residual tumor.  

Chemotherapy (adriamycin and cytoxan) does have side effects that can effect how a person feels.  In general chemotherapy damages cells which are dividing, so the parts of the body where normal cells divide frequently are likely to be affected by chemotherapy.  For instance the mouth, intestines, skin, hair, bone marrow (the spongy material that fills your bones and produces new blood cells).

Although most anti-cancer drugs have side effects, not everyone will get these effects.  A person may experience none, some or all of them.  Whether or not a person will experience a particular side effect, when it will start and stop or how bad it will be depends on many factors.  Some of these factors are, how long a person has been taking the drug, a person