On Friday, January 5ᵗʰ, I saw my oncologist for my monthly appointment. He told me the molecular testing results have not come back yet. The company doing the testing did answer back and said that the amount of material submitted may not be sufficient, so we are waiting on those results once again.
Next, we moved on to my biopsy results. My biopsy results have changed everything. I thank God that I had my biopsy because now we have valuable information that we did not have previously. The biopsy showed that the tumor in my neck had been typed as triple-negative cancer. I was shocked to hear this because my cancer type has always been invasive ductal carcinoma.
I asked my oncologist if my other tumors were also triple-negative, and he said that most likely they were. There isn’t any way of knowing for sure without doing a biopsy of each cancer, which will not be done at this time. Of course, not knowing makes my situation tricky. Since the cancer in my neck is the largest of the tumors, we are changing my treatment to focus on the triple-negative cancer.
So what does this all mean? When thinking about my last scan in October 2023 being so much worse than the previous scan, not only did my previous treatment stop working, but exactly when did it stop working? It’s hard to answer that question, but it was at least three months. Unfortunately, since the tumor in my neck is triple-negative, that also means that for the past two months, I have been taking the wrong medicine for that particular type of cancer. So, at this point, I started taking my new medication on January 6th, and we are hopeful that it will be effective.
My oncologist told me that my next PET Scan, which is scheduled for January 22ⁿᵈ, could be worse than my last scan in October because, again, I have been on the wrong medication. As best as we can figure out, the iBrance and Faslodex killed the hormone-driven part of my cancer, but it didn’t work on the negative part. Both medications eventually stopped working because they treat hormone-driven cancer, not triple-negative. As far as the two medicines that I have been taking for the previous two months, I doubt we will see any clear indication that they are working to improve my cancer because neither of them is used to treat triple-negative cancer.
I know that it is difficult to understand all of these details, but I have done my best to explain everything. If you have any questions, please let me know.