Expert: Claes-Gustaf Nordquist, M.D. - 3/23/2009

Question
My mother was diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer a little over a year ago. By the time they found it it was already stage IV. She has gone through chemo, radiation, and is now getting chemo every three weeks. About a month ago they found a spot on her lymph node and tried to remove it but couldnt so she went through more radiation to see if that would do it. It got rid of it there, and they did a PET scan and found more on her spine and they gave her some kind of new medication that is in a sense a "chemo pill." with my mothers treatment, she gets MRI's once a year routinely. She went in a couple days ago for her annual routine MRI and they found multiple tumors on all parts of the brain. They are starting a ten day radiation treatment and then will do a routine called "cherry picking." They won't be removing the tumors. Does this mean that at this point she can not be expected to live much longer? What if the tumors on her brain are stabilized, but are still present, what effect will that have? Thank you for any information you can give me, I am still very in the dark about this.

Answer
Unfortunately once her cancer has reached her brain her prognosis is very bad even with full treatment including radiation therapy. I do not expect her survival time to be more than measurable in months at most unfortunately. I'm sorry I have nothing better to tell you!