But I'm too positive to be a triple negative

Nothing ever works when your cancer is hormone receptor negative (HR-). At least it seems that way sometimes. For you cancer newbies out there, please don't take that literally.


I've become something of a cancer-research junkie since I've stopped treatment. I studiously avoided any research, internet or otherwise, related to my cancer while undergoing treatment. Numbers are not my friends. Well, they are - sort of. I do feel quite comfortable with them in medical settings (which makes my inablility to do algebra all the more puzzling). For instance, my focal point during labor was the contraction monitor. Forget all that intangible, relaxing beach imagery nonsence and give me a cold, hard fact I can sink my teeth into any day of the week. Anyway... somehow I knew just enough about Inflammatory Breast Cancer to realize that I would obsesses and focus on the bigger numbers in the statistics (that of the 90% variety) instead of the smaller, happier ones. So I avoided Dr. Google religiously. Once I was all finished, however, all bets were off.

So now I studiously watch my news ticker for the latest and greatest in breast cancer research and IBC breakthroughs (of which there is precious little). Yet in my internet travels, linkedy link by linkedy link, I have noticed something that may not be as glaringly obvious to other BC patients/survivors as it is to me. All the new breakthroughs in breast cancer research only work on receptor positive cancers.

This makes me angry. I'm not quite sure at whom. I feel like I'm being descriminated against. I joke, but only a little. Tamoxifen doesn't work on Triple Negative Breast Cancers, neither do any of the other proactive drugs. Why is IBC not only the rarest of breast cancers but also more likely to be triple negative?

Why, oh why, am I so special??? Can't I ever just do things like everyone else?????

This is cross-posted at Mothers With Cancer.