EDUCATION
I’ve consolidated some great resources. Please get educated so you can be your own best advocate! The more you know, the better questions you can ask which will lead to you feeling more like an active participant in your health journey vs. being dragged along blindly without any control. If you know of others that should be added, please email warrior@breastcancerbabe.com.
ER+/-, PR+/-, HR+/-, Triple-, Triple+ Information
- Knowing the hormone receptor status of your cancer helps doctors decide how to treat it.
- If your cancer has one or both of these hormone receptors, hormone therapy drugs can be used to either lower estrogen levels or stop estrogen from acting on breast cancer cells.
- This kind of treatment is helpful for hormone receptor-positive breast cancers, but it doesn’t work on tumors that are hormone receptor-negative (both ER- and PR-negative).
HER2+/- Information
- HER2 is a protein that helps breast cancer cells grow quickly.
- Breast cancer cells with higher than normal levels of HER2 are called HER2-positive.
- These cancers tend to grow and spread faster than breast cancers that are HER2-negative, but are much more likely to respond to treatment with drugs that target the HER2 protein.
Understanding Your Breast Cancer's Grade (1, 2, 3)
- Cancer cells are given a grade when they are removed from the breast and checked in the lab.
- The grade is based on how much the cancer cells look like normal cells.
- The grade is used to help predict your outcome (prognosis) and to help figure out what treatments might work best.
Understanding Your Pathology Report
- Carcinoma? Ductal? Lobular? What does all this mean! Find out here.
Understanding the Different Breast Cancer Stages (0-4)
- After someone is diagnosed with breast cancer, doctors will try to figure out if it has spread, and if so, how far. This process is called staging. The stage of a cancer describes how much cancer is in the body. It helps determine how serious the cancer is and how best to treat it. Doctors also use a cancer’s stage when talking about survival statistics.
Surgery Options
- Most women with breast cancer have some type of surgery as part of their treatment. There are different types of breast surgery, and they may be done for different reasons, depending on the situation.
- Radiation therapy is treatment with high-energy rays (or particles) that destroy cancer cells. Some women with breast cancer will need radiation, in addition to other treatments.
Breast Cancer Treatment Information
Learn About Clinical Trials
- Clinical trials are research studies that involve people. Through clinical trials, doctors find new ways to improve treatments and the quality of life for people with certain diseases.
- Find a Clinical Trial near you: https://clinicaltrials.gov/
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