Thursday, September 11, 2014

Life after TNBC & a pCR

Sometimes I think I'm rockin' it as a Cancer Survivor and have full confidence that I'll be around to raise Elise and nag love my husband for many many more years to come.

Then sometimes I get an ache or pain and I'll spiral into fear and worry that cancer is back as stage IV. I know that despite my strong faith it's human to worry. Luckily each pain has gone away and I thank God every day for that.

But when I'm in the midst of worry I try to look for reasons I should be optimistic. The biggest one for me is that even though Triple Negative Breast Cancer (TNBC) has the worst prognosis of all breast cancer types, having a pCR (pathological complete response) after chemo yields an excellent prognosis. Like, look that this chart:

Source
Now that I'm one year out from surgery what's even more encouraging to me is that all "dips" in the graph for pCR/TNBC are before one year, which means that if I was going to have a reoccurrence I'd likely have it by now. Not 100%, but likely according to studies.

I know that statistics are just statistics and ultimately I'm an individual here by the grace of God. But sometimes that graph reassures me a little.  

And now, for fun, look how good my hair looks now...
Yay for a "Mom-Bob"!