Is there a cure?

This board had been so helpful to me, thank you so much. I am an information junkie and I'm trying to understand something.  I have stage 2A Lobular Cancer, 2.3 cm. node negative, ERPR > 90% + HER 2 negative. I just started dosedense ACT. I keep reading about survival rates, and while I certainly want to survive, I want to be cured.  I don't want to deal with this again. Any information on how many people are cured, in addition to being alive? Also, any tips on feeling better, and less anxious through chemo?  Thank you again.

[CCF-RN,MSN-JS]

SMOKEY 234, The best we can do in terms of prediction is to give statistics about response rates, and survival statistics (usually discussed in 5 year time frames) of large groups with similar disease characteristics (stage, hormone receptor status etc.).  A statistic that is also talked about is disease free survival, this is the time after treatment in which no disease is evident, discussed particularly in terms of adjuvant treatments for cancer.  However, here too, when the studies about treatments are published a 5 year disease free survival statistic might be available, longer term statistics are not always available.

In regards to help during chemotherapy, I am giving you an address to the website Chemocare.com (www.chemocare.com).  On this site is information about various chemotherapy medications, side effect management of over 50 different side effects, etc.

[omacar]

the goal of chemo is to put you in remission that will be a cure. Survival depends on many things the tumor itself, the pathology, your response to treatment etc.  It is not possible to pin point survival time.  Each day we live we are surviving. We can only do the best we can and not spend energy trying to figure out survival and putting it in a box.  Live each day, plan your life and take it as it comes. There is life after a cancer diagnosis, live it to the max and hope for the best.  Good luck! hugs trudy

[Phillyfish]

I know how you feel.  Last summer when I completed my initial 9 months of treatment, I asked my oncologist what my "official" status was.  Expecting him to say cured, he told me I was in remission with no detectible signs of active cancer.  REMISSION - not what I wanted to hear!  I further questioned him as to when I would be declared cured, in two years, five, ten?  He replied "a breast cancer patient is considered cured of breast cancer when they have died of some other cause.  Not until they are DEAD can they be considered to be cured."  Since then I have decided I don't want to be "cured".

I am still having a bit of trouble dealing with the term "remission" but I am learning that it is just a medical label.  I am adjusting to he fact that I will forever be a cancer patient - hopefully one without any active disease.  I think surgeon put it this way, "we must find a way to live with the uncertainty of the future".  Some days it is easier said than done.