Gloria M.
Sorry to join this group but glad you are here! I just finished 21 rounds of chemo for angiosarcoma of the breast in March 2010 and am now official NED, THANK GOD and MD Anderson! Though the MD Anderson thanks is a bit subdued due to the fact that I was under the care of the breast dept there and my oncologist ‘dismissed’ the red spot on my breast for year as nothing. Only after it turned into a giant bruise and 3 biopsies at MDA was it finally diagnosed correctly as ASB.
This was my second “radiation induced” cancer. ASB followed breast cancer 7 years after a double mastectomy for matching tumors caused by radiation 23 years earlier for Hodgkin’s Disease when I was 27 yrs old. The radiation dosage back then was ten times stronger than it is now & was the same dose as people within a 5 mile range of the direct hit on Nagasaki. This was a lifetime supply, so more radiation was out for me, which is why I had so much chemo (12 wkly rounds of Taxol, 3 of IFX, 2 of Taxol & Gemzar, 2 of Adria).
I continue to work out as much as possible, eat my veggies, take many angiogenic supplements & cut the sugar! After hundreds of books and thousands of web searches, my current favorite beating cancer advice comes from “Anti-Cancer, A New Way of Life” by Dr. David Servan Schreiber. He will be the keynote speaker at MDA’s fall Patient Conference. Hope to see lots of you there!
For the past 3 yrs I have been the coordinator of the Anderson Network’s Austin, Tx community outreach support group and a Livestrong Leader in Austin. Please count me in to join whatever noise we can make to get more resources & research for rare cancers!