There Will Be A Quiz

This weekend my doctor was one of probably thousands of oncologists attending the American Society of Clinical Oncologists annual meeting. I hope he was paying attention.

Several studies that were discussed at the conference impact my treatment, though it may be too little, too late. Here are some of the highlights:

• Patients with breast cancer having high levels of estrogen receptors (that'd be me) are among the patient subsets that may not benefit from chemotherapy.


• Anthracyclines (one of the chemo drugs I'm getting) have almost no effect in 92 percent of breast cancer cases.


• And the only piece of "good" news: Breast cancer patients who reported having hot flashes have a 12.9% chance of recurrence, as opposed to a 21% possibility for those without hot flashes. Whoever knew I'd be thankful for my hot flashes!

I'll be discussing these studies with my doctor at my next appointment and making sure we're doing everything possible to beat this.