Why chemo ?

I had cold caps for 6 months ACT. I found it painful, but I kept my hair for quite a while and it grew back pretty quickly when I did lose it. It grew during Taxol. I’d actually like to have had ice gloves or ice on my feet as peripheral neuropathy has lasted for 4 years and can be very painful. I wish I’d focused less on my hair and more on my feet. 

Really good article @Vangirl. Very clear.

Thank you so much @Vangirl that is a really interesting article. 

I bookmarked an article a couple of months ago that has bearing on this topic:
https://theconversation.com/my-cancer-is-in-remission-does-this-mean-im-cured-95429

Chemotherapy is in case some cancer cells are elsewhere in your body which is possible because cancer cells were in some of your lymph nodes.  The chemo is designed to kill them, if they exist.  If I was very old I probably wouldn’t bother. But I was 60 so it was worthwhile doing, I thought.  Unpleasant, yes, but it doesn’t last for ever (although it can feel like it at the time.) The multipronged approach of surgery, radiation, chemo and hormone therapy if appropriate is why breast cancer has such a high survival rate.   

Thanks for comments on predictive treatment tools. It's something I have yet to go over with my oncologist and I know I should. 

Hi @Melc503,

Just ask your onc whether they can offer you the cold cap.  Hopefully they have it at the clinic.  I am not sure if you can hire these privately.  I don't think so.  Just send me amessage if y
OMG doing AC weekly would be torture

@Brenda5 Imy horse and I have both had chemo.  I had a tumour removed from the middle of his forehead.  Two weeks after the initial surgery it came back with a vengeance twice as big and twice as nasty.  He had to have chemo needles injected into it to kill it off.    I blame that for his lack of mane LOL.

Breast cancer has a nasty little habit of coming back without chemo and or radiation treatment. I had a dog that just had the surgery and was deemed all clear but 18mths later it was back with a vengeance and then it was too involved to go the surgery again plus chemo. I imagine it can be the same in people. If it comes back it is nastier and you definitely don't want that. Breast cancer is fed via the blood stream and during biopsies or surgery it is possible little microscopic bits of the cancer can break off and enter the blood stream and travel to other parts of the body. Under the right conditions it can then redevelop into a tumor. Doctors tend to hit an initial diagnosis with everything they have like surgery, chemo and radiation so hopefully it never comes back.
Maybe you will be one of those who doesn't have too much trouble with treatment side effects at all? 

Good caution @Sister. My oncologist went through them with similar cautions. The two I remember were that they were based on now considerably old statistics, so not reflective of treatment developments of the last 20 years, and that the 10 year timeframe was reflective of all causes of death, not just BC.

The online treatment calculators have come up before in discussion.  If you look at them, you need to be aware that they only really apply to ductal carcinoma so if your cancer was one of the others, the results won't necessarily reflect the right stats.  @zoffiel replied to a post a few months ago in more detail about these calculators which is worth reading if you're interested (I think the discussion was "Treatment Calculators").  That's not to say that they don't have any value, but I would suggest that you treat the results with caution and discuss them with your oncologist before using them as a basis for decision-making.  My oncologist offered to go through one of these predictive tools with me (I can't remember now which one) but gave me a brief background on them and that it would not be reflective of my cancer at all (lobular).

And, of course, remember that they are just stats.