SurvivingTriple Negative Breast Cancer

Patricia Prijatel is a triple-negative breast cancer survivor. She featured the following excerpt from her book which is soon to be published in this guest post. Patricia is an award-winning teacher and writer known for both her insight and her humor.

In her words…Triple-negative breast cancer has caught the attention of major researchers throughout the world, which is a great thing—it means that we are learning more and more about how to prevent and treat this illness. The downside of the research popularity is that the media and medical journals have developed depressing and frightening catch phrases for it, such as deadly, particularly aggressive or, my favorite, a lethal triad. People who write these words do not realize that they can terrify the women who read them, hitting like a heavy thud on our hearts. Researchers are trying to define the disease. Patients are trying to beat it.

Let’s start with a definition of what is meant by Triple -Negative Breast Cancer – Pathologists test breast cancer tumors to determine their receptor status, or the tendency of the cells to attract estrogen (ER) or progesterone (PR). Breast cancer cells without receptors have no mechanism for attracting these hormones, so the nasty little buggers form hormone-negative, or receptor-negative cancer. In short, this form of cancer is not fueled by estrogen. Those of us who have had hormone negative breast cancer are an elite minority, although 70,000 new cases of this form of cancer are diagnosed a year. A little more than a third of all breast cancers are hormone-negative:

• 25 percent are both ER-negative and PR-negative.
• 10 percent are ER-positive and PR-negative.
• 5 percent are ER-negative and PR-positive.

TRIPLE-NEGATIVE: 15 percent of all women test negative for ER, PR, and HER2, or the human epidermal growth factor receptor, creating triple-negative breast cancer.

The aggressive nature of hormone-negative is a comparative measure. That is, these cancers are, in general, more aggressive than hormone-positive cancers—although, in some cases, only slightly more aggressive. And some hormone-negative cancers can actually be less aggressive than some hormone-positive cancers. Scientists work in generalizations, defining how the disease affects women as a group. Individual cases vary and, researchers increasingly say, are as unique as our DNA.

How researchers classify triple-negative, for example, can vary.

My own case—negative for estrogen and her2, but weakly positive for progesterone—puts me in a fairly narrow subset. Yet I had two oncologists tell me that they classify weakly positive as a negative, meaning I would be triple-negative. Researchers disagree, usually considering any level of positive as being positive. It is possible, though, that my weakly positive progesterone put me in a less aggressive subset that is so small it is seldom researched.

So let’s look at some of the data and what they mean. And rather than simply accepting the gloomy picture that is often presented, let’s approach this in the enterprising spirit of yeah, but….

It is true that hormone-negative breast cancers can be more aggressive than hormone-positive. But the majority of women who get the disease survive.

It is true that most cases of recurrence come within the first three years. But that means that those who hit five years are looking at an excellent prognosis. A better long-term prognosis, in fact, than those with hormone-positive.

It is true that triple-negative is more likely to have spread to the lymph nodes. But many women with Triple-Negative Breast Cancer have no positive nodes—and, if they do, they still beat the disease and survive.

I have learned to turn statistics around to improve my perspective. For example, when research says that 30 percent of the women with triple-negative died in a particular study, I turn this around and realize that 70 percent of the women survived. And I plan to be one of those women. And if, in another study, a triple-negative woman faces a two-fold increased risk of death compared with hormone-positive, I look at the fact that the difference might be between a 10 percent risk of and a 20 percent risk. And, while those decreased odds are startling and sobering, they still can mean an 80 percent chance of not dying. Even starting with a poorer prognosis, the odds can still be with you.

You can contact Patricia at patricia.prijatel@drake.edu. You can visit her site by going to www.hormonenegative.blogspot.com.

Jean Campbell blogs about navigating breast cancer at www.noboobsaboutit.org