Shortly after I joined a closed Facebook support group for metastatic breast cancer, I saw people using an acronym that I was not familiar with: NEAD. It stands for “No Evidence of Active Disease” – it’s about as close to “cure” as MBC folks get. It’s wonderful to see others celebrating NEAD status as a result of their different treatments. It gave me hope that I, too, would be posting about my NEAD status as a result of my Ibrance/Letrazole regimen.

From the very beginning of my treatment until over a year later, my scans were always “stable” which meant that there were no signs of progression or new disease. It also meant that we hadn’t moved the needle at all on reducing the cancer . Everyone tells you that “stable” is good and to be happy. I most certainly am happy that the disease is not increasing. However, I can’t help but have a slight “stay of execution” feeling. If after a year we haven’t made a dent in the cancer, we probably never will. We are corralling the beast for now but at some point in the unknown future, it will slip through the fence and start advancing again through my body. Then it will be time to reach into the MBC bag of medicine and see if there’s another line of treatment we can try. And all the while hoping that the cancer doesn’t progress too much and, even better, the next line might get you closer to that NEAD status.

With “extensive” mets to my liver, I’m frequently thinking about the cancer having the opportunity to grow and take up further residence in my liver. My mother had stage 4 endometrial cancer and what eventually killed her was liver failure. I know to a large degree, how or when the cancer spreads is out of my hands and that I’m mentally better off living in the moment and not thinking about such things. It’s hard but I keep striving towards that end.

Tomorrow I have another PET scan. I used to hope for regression with the scans, but now I set my expectation to be that I remain “stable” since that’s much preferable to “progression”

Maybe NEAD status will come someday. I’ll continue to hope and continue to try to live my life in the here and now.