Week 4
It’s been a very difficult couple of days, but we wanted to update everyone sooner rather than later. We met with Lisa’s oncologist earlier this week to discuss the new treatment plan. Unfortunately (at least for now) stage 4 metastatic breast cancer is not considered curable, but it is treatable and we remain hopeful that Lisa’s cancer will respond well to the therapy (this is often the case with HER2+ tumors like hers).
The current plan is to still do 18 weeks of chemotherapy (starting on Monday 2nd March) and then go onto maintenance therapy indefinitely with a cocktail of recently developed targeted therapies (with much less severe side effects than chemo). She’ll need to be on drugs of one form or another for the foreseeable future and will undergo frequent scans (every 3 months) to check that the cancer continues to respond to the treatment. If the cancer stops responding, then we’ll be able to move onto the next line of therapy rapidly at that point. The oncologist told us to expect up to 5 years of treatment with this set of drugs before they stop working and there are several things to move onto after that. The breast cancer therapeutic space has taken great leaps forward in the last 10-15 years and continues to advance rapidly with an average of 2-3 new therapies approved every year. The doctors are gathering all the information that we can to know which of these new therapies will be most likely to work for Lisa (by performing additional biopsies and sequencing the tumor to identify mutations). Basically, the chemo will knock the cancer down as hard as possible, then the other drugs will keep it down and the scans/testing/surveillance will let us know how to respond if/when it tries to get back up.
This course of action avoids the need for surgery so Lisa will be spared the discomfort and risks of a major operation. The major reason to perform surgery is to prevent spread beyond the breast, which has already happened in her case so it no longer being recommended.
It also means there is little-to-no chance of her carrying another baby. We’ve completed the IVF cycle but the only way to use any embryos now will likely be via a surrogate carrier.
Chemo starts tomorrow (Monday 2nd March) and that’s the start of our fight back against Lisa’s cancer. We’re also waiting for the results from a lung biopsy that was taken on Friday and the results from genetic testing.
In between all the appointments, procedures, wig shopping etc. we also managed to have a birthday party for Archie who turns two on Wednesday 4th March!
We also wanted to thank all the friends, family and colleagues for kind words, generosity, well wishes and messages of support. It really does mean a lot and Lisa loves hearing from you all so please continue to reach out to her via text, email, calls or this site. She may not be able to respond individually, but please know how much your love and support matter to her.