7/2 update on my battle against breast cancer

Hi everyone,

I have good and bad news. I have four more weeks on the new chemotherapy I’m on, Taxol. Then it’s on to three months of radiation. Yeah! I’ll be extremely happy when chemo is over. Taxol, along with the Neulasta shot, causes excruciating bone pain and I’ll be glad when I’ve “graduated” from the chemo stage. Not that I’m looking forward to radiation, but it’s got to be better than chemo.

However, there is some bad news. As you may know, I tested positive for a protein called HER2. HER2-positive tumors are a particularly aggressive form of cancer that affects approximately 20 percent to 25 percent of breast cancer patients. HER2 pushes a cell to divide, and while a little on a cell is normal, a lot is not. No one knows why, but in these so-called "HER2-positive" tumors, these proteins are over-expressed. When this happens, the cancer becomes aggressive.

The only FDA approved treatment for this aggressive type of cancer is Herceptin. Herceptin is a specific type of biologic therapy, a monoclonal antibody, designed to shut down activity of these HER2 proteins by sticking to and "smothering" them, halting the pro-growth molecular instructions that these proteins relay into the body of the cancer cells.

The bad news is that I’m experiencing an allergic reaction to the Herceptin. In fact, my doctors have halted the treatments of Herceptin for the last three weeks until my symptoms subside. I’m supposed to take the Herceptin treatments for a year, but it looks like I may not be able to take it at all! This definitely worries both the doctors and myself because if they cannot kill the “food source” of my cancer, my survival and recurrence rate drop considerably.

Please pray for wisdom for the doctors and that either my body can tolerate the treatment or that if I cannot have treatment, that God will deal with the HER2 protein and kill it Himself. Please pray for the allergic reaction to subside. I’m currently taking Benadryl and steroids which are causing their own issues and side effects (internal bleeding, fatigue, & suppressed immune system). Please pray that I will be off of these drugs soon and will no longer need them.


Blessings,Noëlle