Chemo not worked as expected
I have struggled to find others in my situation, so if anyone can relate, I’d appreciate hearing your experiences. I’m in the UK under the NHS if that’s relevant. And sorry for the long post.
So, I was diagnosed with ER weakly positive, HE2 negative, stage 2b grade 3 breast cancer in October last year. Due to grade and lymph node involvement it was decided I should have chemo as well as surgery, radiotherapy and hormone treatment. After advice I decided to have chemo before surgery - three rounds of EC and three of docetaxel.
Initially, all went well - i had a scan that showed the tumour had responded, and had shrunk from 30mmx20mm to 28x7mm. Lymph nodes had also responded.
After starting docetaxel I felt something wasn’t right. Tumour felt different, it was sore and easier to find. I kept mentioning this but kept being told it would be unusual to have not responded to docetaxel after a strong response to EC. So I pushed through to round 5 and didnt push to be seen beforehand.
Anyway, had a meeting with the breast surgeon about my surgery a couple of days ago, mentioned I thought had grown. She examined me, immediately ordered a scan and lo and behold, tumor is now bigger than it was at diagnosis (it’s now 35mm). Weirdly the lymph nodes have shrunk though.
I’ve now got to skip the last cycle of chemo and go straight to surgery.
I’m gutted and really confused as to how this could have happened, feel anxious about not completing chemo , and upset with myself for not pushing harder to Be seen when I knew something was wrong.
Has anyone had a similar experience?