Breast cancer is a bad, sometimes frightening diagnosis at any time but a triple negative breast cancer diagnosis is particularly disturbing. Generally speaking, breast cancer is defined in terms of a receptor which reveals specific genes. The three receptors are estrogen, progesterone and Her2.
Secondary breast cancer, also called metastatic breast cancer, occurs when the disease spreads from the breast to elsewhere in the body. Some patients will have their first diagnosis of breast cancer only to discover that it has spread and is in fact metastatic breast cancer. Many women who are diagnosed with secondary cancer have had breast cancer at a previous time. Secondary cancer is caused by cancerous cells breaking away from their first place of infection to travel via the bloodstream to other parts of the body. Obviously metastatic breast cancer is serious and harder to fight because the disease is not confined simply to the breast.
There are many types of cancer and breast cancer is one of the most common. Roughly speaking about 1 in 11 women by the age of 75 will be diagnosed with cancer of the breast. It occurs rarely in males – about 1% of all cases – and so is understood to be a female disease. There are many stages of breast cancer, many treatments and many outcomes.
It should be stressed that breast cancer is not easy to define. By that I mean that there are various types of breast cancer, various stages of the growth of the disease, various methods of treatment and, of course, various outcomes with some women beating the disease, some living with it for different lengths of time and some succumbing to the disease. But to the question can breast cancer be defeated? the answer is most definitely, yes.
Hope is an important weapon; some say the best weapon in the fight against breast cancer and for all cancers. And hope can be seen in a tangible form in the field of research. It is happening constantly in places around the globe. There may be wars and disputes which divide people but in cancer research we are untied. Scientists share discoveries and publish papers on breakthroughs.
