Herceptin Magic

Hope you all had a happy weekend! Luis and I went house hunting yesterday and found a house that we can't afford. We also looked at a lot of upscale family friendly neighborhoods that I thought I would have liked, and they were way too Texan for me. They all had the American Flag, the Texan Flag, and the Texas Star nailed to their house. I am sure in November there would have been tons of McCain/Palin signs everywhere. I hate sounding so homgenous, but I need to move to a place where neighborhood parties aren't going to be torture.

I have gotten lots of recommendations for which art class I should take. I am leaning toward Quickdraw (thanks for your thoughts, Coral), but as my doctor said I am going to be on this chemo for longer than the typical 4 cycles, and it is already making me so tired, I need to check the schedule to make sure that it isn't in the morning.

For all HER2+ cancer patients out there I found a really interesting article where Herceptin has actually been documented in the lab to FLIP you from ER/PR- to ER/PR+!

For those of you who aren't well versed in breast cancer, this is HUGE!! Usually what happens is that you get a core biopsy, they take out a piece of the tumor, examine it, and say, okay your tumor is like this, blah blah blah. In my case, they took it out and said you are ER- PR- and HER2+. Which means I have one weapon, herceptin, in my arsenal beyond surgery and chemo.

If would have been ER+ or PR+, then I could have used hormonal therapy. The more pluses, the more "weapons" you have. But, I don't.

However, this research is showing that once you bombard the tumor with Herceptin, it can potential flip from not feeding off of estrogen to feeding off of estrogen. Which is amazing because that means that you CAN fight it with hormonal therapy! It has changed the tumor completely and I am not just waiting around for Herceptin to become ineffective again.

They reason why this is very difficult to monitor is because once the tumor is removed, there usually isn't anything to biopsy or check, and why on earth would you think that the chemo would make the tumor change "personalities" anyway?

The interesting thing is that I still have a tumor in my neck which could be checked to see if my tumor has become ER+/PR+. If it shrinks away, it can't, but I want to show my doctor the research and see if he would be interested on putting me on hormonal therapy anyway on the assumption that it could help.

The only challenge I see is the insurance company not wanting to pay for a therapy that "could" help my tumor. We would need to biopsy something to see if, in fact, the tumor has changed before they would be willing to pay for it. The human trial is now recruiting in Ann Arbor.

Okay, enough Med Speak. Gonna go watch the market crash for a while and smile at my short positions.

Here is a great video on the PREVENTION of breast cancer, and what woman can do to stop themselves from getting cancer in the first place, instead of trying to backpedaled like me! I am taking all the supplements he suggests, and my mother has gotten thermal imaging instead of mammograms before in New Zealand and it works very well!