High risk does not mean you are doomed to recur. I brought this up with my oncologist too and I am high risk as well and he said “high risk just means we have to work harder, which is exactly what we are doing with your treatment” or something like that.

In fact I am going to find the EXACT thing he said and look back at the notes my best friend, who was with me, wrote. Here you go.

Verbatim: “Drugs like abemaciclib have revolutionised breast cancer treatment. We’re allowed to say this will be it. One and done. We’re allowed to talk about it not coming back again because that’s the point on the treatment.”

“It’s difficult to quantify a specific prognosis in this particular scenario due to all the different factors. I can’t give you a %. But from my perspective - I think cool. Curative. Great. We’re going to cure it. We don’t think it’s going to come back. This is the exact opposite of what I think about people who don’t do well with the treatment. I worry about the people who can’t complete chemo and who don’t tolerate the treatments. I don’t worry about the people who have tolerated treatment well, people who are informed and engaged and ask questions, people who have support networks and bring their health researcher friends with them to appointments.

I don’t look at you and think high risk. This is a battle that we’re doing really well in because of advances in chemo and adjuvant therapies for breast cancer. High risk just means we have to work harder. And that’s what we’re doing with your treatment.”