Surviving triple negative breast cancer - CNN.com: ...Reed, 40, has breast cancer; not just any form of the disease, but a rare, aggressive and difficult to treat version called triple negative.
Of the estimated 180,000 women who learn they have invasive breast cancer this year in the United States, about 15 percent will have triple negative.
Like Reed, the majority of triple negative patients will be young African-American women.
'It never occurred to me that I'm going to die from this,' Reed said. 'I was like, 'I've got breast cancer, let's take care of it.' '
Reed did take care of it. For eight months during 2006, she endured chemotherapy and radiation treatments. She thought the cancer was in remission, but it returned last November. This time, it had spread to her liver, lungs and chest wall.
'Triple negative cancers do tend to be aggressive in their natural histories, so they have a very high rate of recurrence or relapsing,' explained Dr. Ruth O'Regan, Reed's oncologist at the Winship Institute.
