Husband GP and she is dentist so we understand the science. Though it has changed so much in the last 10 years   Really hoping she doesn’t have to go through too many side effects with treatment but so glad that the research has made such good progress and improvements in prognosis  

Hi Cazilion,

Welcome to Cancer Chat. I'm sorry to hear of the situation with your daughter - this must be a lot to process and I am sure it is tough with not being close.

It sounds like she has some good support around her. Hopefully it won't be long to get all the information you need, which may help a little in terms of understanding next steps.

I hope that this forum can be of some support to you. We are always here if you need it, and it is often helpful simply to write things down, and to reach out to others.

My reply will give your post a little boost, so a few more people should see it and so hopefully you'll get more replies. You can also search the forum (using the bar at the top of the page) for other relevant discussions and people to connect with, if you'd like to.

Wishing you all the best,

Ben
Cancer Chat Moderator

Thank you Ben.  Very helpful 

Hiya.

Some of this will come across as me teaching you how to suck eggs, so apologises in advance.

My wife is 3 years out from her triple + treatment. She was stage 3, grade 3. It was found in 2 of her lymphs and using the oncologists own words, was pretty extensive and was as bad as it gets as far as the curative prognosis goes. She had everything thrown at her. EC and docetaxel (nasty stuff).

During her EC chemo she found it a breeze relatively speaking. It made a dent in the tumours, but wasn't anything amazing for her personally. Then came the docetaxel. It made her ill after each and every cycle. So much so, she was about to get taken off it. But they decided to proceed with the last one. Come her final post chemo scans, the docetaxel had completely obliterated the cancer. She had had a full response. She was originally down for a mastectomy, but due to her complete response, it was downgraded to a lumpectomy. They had to reinsert markers before the op because the old markers were no longer relevant. They couldn't find anything on her scans. The pathology after the op found no cancer cells.

She got around 30 radiotherapy sessions and also thigh injections for the HER 2.

She's still classed cancer free to this day. Yeah, she's had scares, but they turned out to be nothing but scar tissue and cysts due to her treatment. She's on tamoxifen and will be for the next 7 years. She's had some issues, but not many. She found the worst part of the treatment was the insomnia due to the hormones all being depleted. She struggled badly with that. The steroids didn't help matters either.

Your daughter sounds like she's starting off in a better position so her treatment may involve less chemo etc.

Thank you so much for replying. And so glad to hear of the great response your wife had to treatment.   Do you mind me asking how old she was at diagnosis ?   My daughter(36)  has the MRI result next week so we will know treatment plan 

very best wishes 

Hi, my wife was 49, but pre menopause. Hence, her being on tamoxifen. She had a biopsy last year, which showed she was still more pre menopause than menopausal. It's all confusing to me.

Again, you'll probably know all this because of your profession and your daughter's profession, but things we wish we knew before treatment was is to have a very soft toothbrush at hand should mouth issues start. My wife had a bona fide baby one. She also began to get altered taste, and she found oranurse toothpaste (Bought from Amazon) a Godsend. Mint hurt her mouth badly and the taste was also awful. This toothpaste is made for people going through chemo, suffering from altered taste etc. It's tasteless and doesn't sting.

Be prepared for the insomnia. We went into the cancer diagnosis ignorant. We thought cancer = fatigue. How wrong we were. It was the opposite.

Do let us know how her mri goes. I'm genuinely rooting for your daughter. Once the mri results are in, we found things calmed down a lot on the mental front. She will have her treatment plan to focus on and the not knowing, which is awful mentally, lifts somewhat.

Thankyou  I’ll keep in touch. Really helpful message.  

Hi, so sorry to hear about your daughter. My wife was diagnosed with acute myloid leukemia in July 2024 and we have 2 kids, the youngest was 21 months at diagnosis so similar ages. She was 33yrs old. It's a horrendous shock and every cancer journey is different. I can't give any advice about breast cancer treatment. I hope her treatment is fairly planned, if you have appts and a schedule of whats happening when that'll be really useful so you can concentrate your help at times they most need it. My wife ended up being in hospital for 3 of the past 6 months between admissions for aggressive chemo and sepsis due to neutropenia but that's more because her immune system was wiped for her type of cancer, I wouldn't expect that with breast cancer. 

Obviously because of my experience I massively sympathise with her partner, it has honestly been the most horrendous time worrying about her, and trying to keep the kids stability as much as possible, keep the house going, supporting her to keep going physically and mentally. So make sure her partner has some time out to just go on a walk, meet friends and do some normal stuff. I reisted because I felt I wouldn't be fulfilling my role of looking after everyone but it just meant I was more burnt out which doesn't then help anyone.

For the kids, stability is key, try to stick to routine as much as possible. It's so dependent on each child and their nature but I have a very energetic youngest son and his behaviour went off the charts when lots of different people were helping/putting him to bed (although my wife had just disappeared into hospital for 5 weeks unexpectedly so that certainly added to how unsettled he was). So when you're helping it may be you can do bedtimes etc or it might be that actually bedtimes by the parents while you help tidy up after tea is the best help. If you're staying overnight and the wee one is up at night time, just ask what they want you to do in advance. Again they may love having a help for a night time wake or they may say leave it to us and if you get up in the morning with them that'd be great. So just ask what's helpful and that may change as things go and you all get used to a new groove with you staying occasionally. 

Don't underestimate how mentally draining it will be over time. I've definitely felt overwhelmed when with my youngest, especially as he turned 2 and became even more energetic and makes alot of noise. It can be a challenge when you have no bandwidth left, so your daughter and her partner may absolutely love having the distraction but at times just be totally overwhelmed/overstimulated with the wee one. Again depends on how crazy or chill ur grandchild is .

Thankfully my wife is in remission and we are in the 2 weeks after finishing treatment but she is exhausted and we're both processing the insanity of the past 7 months. We naively thought we'd be able to get back to normal quickly but with her physical recovery likely taking months and both of us mentally exhausted we're still needing help with the kids. So worthwhile remembering when she's done treatment t that they might crash and burn depending on how crazy their journey has been so help may still be appreciated.

I wouldn't have got through the last 7 months without my parents and in laws support. They were fantastic and helped with the kids so much and I'll be forever grateful that a horrendous time was made easier by their support and meant the kids got through as best as they could as well.

Best of luck to you all

Thank you so much for your helpful reply and very glad to hear your wife is through her treatment.  Hope you can both start to relax more and recover from what has happened. 
Your  tips about childcare are really useful  We are retired and plan to be there as often as needed while still giving them  some space.    Fortunately the other in-laws are much nearer so can also help. 
Very best wishes to you and your family.  And Thankyou again. 

Thank you so  much for your helpful reply and very glad to hear your wife is through her treatment    Really useful tips and will bear them in mind. 
very best wishes to you and your family