Progress in Breast Cancer Treatment Shows in Recurrence Rates

A new study looked at survival of moderate or advanced breast cancer patients between the 1980s and 2000s. During those two decades new treatments and advancements, greatly decreased the recurrence rates.

I read the attached and two areas were of great interest. During that time Herceptin was made available and Her2 positive cancers became much easier to treat. Also, estrogen driven cancers used to have a consistentlyhigh recurrence rate but now it is much lower.

While the rate changes vary, overall the recurrence rate has fallen by 50% in those twenty years. This makes me wonder what can happen in the next twenty years in terms of cancer treatment progress.

While breast cancer is the most common cancer among women, we must not forget about other cancers and their recurrence rates.

But in the meantime, I will call this progress.

There is a huge lesson here for all of us

We all have a lesson to learn here. We need to learn to accept our lives for what they are instead of allowing parts of it to cause us stress or depression.

I have now read this article three times. Learning to Live with It: Becoming stress free.

The more I read it, the more it helps me think of my medically disastrous life. I have continuous problems where my health keeps throwing another disaster my way and I have to learn to cope each one. A cancer diagnosis was one - maybe a touch of PTSD with that? But what about an RA diagnosis? Making life more fun each time.

Every change requires adaptation to survive and learn to readapt to the new parts of your life. But we don't need to change the external forces in our life - whether a bad partner, but learn to change our life to cope in its new version.

But the goal of learning to live with, not necessarily to accept it, but to cope, survive and thrive. That has become my goal now. I will keep reading and maybe learn some more about this. Many lessons here.

There is a huge lesson here for all of us

We all have a lesson to learn here. We need to learn to accept our lives for what they are instead of allowing parts of it to cause us stress or depression.

I have now read this article three times. Learning to Live with It: Becoming stress free.

The more I read it, the more it helps me think of my medically disastrous life. I have continuous problems where my health keeps throwing another disaster my way and I have to learn to cope each one. A cancer diagnosis was one - maybe a touch of PTSD with that? But what about an RA diagnosis? Making life more fun each time.

Every change requires adaptation to survive and learn to readapt to the new parts of your life. But we don't need to change the external forces in our life - whether a bad partner, but learn to change our life to cope in its new version.

But the goal of learning to live with, not necessarily to accept it, but to cope, survive and thrive. That has become my goal now. I will keep reading and maybe learn some more about this. Many lessons here.

How to survive cancer

So with a cancer diagnosis, not only are you instantly plunged into cancerland on the roller coaster from hell, your life is changed.

I found two recent blog posts on Ten Things to Expect When You Have Cancer and Ten Tips from a 26 Year Breast Cancer Survivor to be helpful. Even though I resent that some people think we need every internet article to be a list of tips instead of essay format.

But then I wonder wouldn't it be nice if we didn't need these articles if cancer treatment experienced the breakthroughs I blogged about yesterday. That would be very nice.

Right now cancer treatment is horrible. Surgery, poisoning with chemotherapy and burned with radiation. What if cancer treatment didn't need to be so horrible and treatment was no worse than that for other treatable diseases? What if treatment was not as disfiguring and as hard to endure?

What if surviving cancer was an expectation and not the exception?

Progress in Breast Cancer Treatment Shows in Recurrence Rates

A new study looked at survival of moderate or advanced breast cancer patients between the 1980s and 2000s. During those two decades new treatments and advancements, greatly decreased the recurrence rates.

I read the attached and two areas were of great interest. During that time Herceptin was made available and Her2 positive cancers became much easier to treat. Also, estrogen driven cancers used to have a consistentlyhigh recurrence rate but now it is much lower.

While the rate changes vary, overall the recurrence rate has fallen by 50% in those twenty years. This makes me wonder what can happen in the next twenty years in terms of cancer treatment progress.

While breast cancer is the most common cancer among women, we must not forget about other cancers and their recurrence rates.

But in the meantime, I will call this progress.