It can be a hard question to ask, but ask your doctor what your 5 year recurrence and survival odds are both with and without the CDK inhibitor. Your doctor is suggesting you take the CDK inhibitor because you are at higher risk of having the cancer recur since it was in your lymph node and you had a lumpectomy. You don't mention what grade your cancer was or any of the other test results you receive when they biopsy your tumor after surgery. If those test results show your cancer as being more aggressive then that's another reason why your doctor is suggesting you take the CDK inhibitor.

With most cancers, including breast cancer, once you are diagnosed you are never considered to be truly "cancer free." The best we can hope for is being NED, which means no evidence of disease. Your doctor appears to want you on both the AI and CDK inhibitors because your latest scans show you are NED and the doctor wants to keep you in that status. Anyhow, talk to your doctor some more about your concerns and their reasoning about putting you on the CDK inhibitor. Good luck with whichever option you choose ❤️

I'm dealing with my 2nd case of breast cancer and have had endometrial cancer 4 times. All of my cancers have been hormone positive (HR+) and HER2 negative. My 2nd breast cancer was an aggressive stage 3C cancer. I had a double mastectomy with my 1st breast cancer. For the second breast cancer I had a pseudo lumpectomy. They basically scraped out any remaining breast tissue which was located up towards my clavicle and removed a chunk of my chest muscle with the cancerous tumor. I had 2 lymph nodes removed from my chest, both cancerous, and 14 of the 16 lymph nodes removed in my armpit disection were cancerous as well.

I'm on Letrozole for my AI and Ibrance for my CDK inhibitor. Ibrance was the original CDK inhibitor and I am taking the lowest dose which is 75mg. When I started on Ibrance I was on a schedule of 3 weeks on and 1 week off the medication, but my blood test results for liver functions were too high. It took a couple months to get it adjusted. I am now on a 2 week on and 2 week off cycle and my liver is much happier. The only side effects I have from the Letrozole are hot flashes and my lifelong insomnia has grown a little worse. The only side effect I notice from the Ibrance is during my "on" weeks my energy level is a bit lower and during my "off" weeks my energy returns to it's normal level. My 5 year odds of cancer returning without the AI and CDK inhibitor are 50% and with those 2 medications it's reduced to 30% which is why I'm taking the medications. Ibrance is supposed to have less side effects than the other CDK inhibitors so ask your doctor if you can take Ibrance instead of the Kisquali.

CDK inhibitors were originally given to stage 4 cancer patients, but nowadays they are also given to stage 2 and 3 cancer patients that are at higher risk of having their cancer return and possibly metastacize into stage 4 cancer. If your cancer has lymph node involvement it is considered higher risk for return.

When women have lumpectomies the standard of care is to have radiation afterwards because there is a good chance there are still some stray cancer cells in the breast that weren't removed during the lumpectomy and are too small to show up on a PET scan or MRI. Women that have had a mastectomy instead of a lumpectomy will often times be able to avoid having radiation because the odds of all the cancer cells being removed are higher. Since 1 lymph node had cancer it's possible that other lymph nodes could have cancer that is too small to show up on your various scans.

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