Christine Knowles

Welcome to my CaringBridge website. I am using it to keep family and friends updated in one place. I appreciate your support and words of hope and encouragement. Thank you for visiting.

As you know I was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2007. At that time it was stage 3.  Then in 2010 a PET scan revealed it was stage 4. That means that the cancer spread from it's primary location to another area.  Mine spread to my bones.  Since that time,  to make a long story short,  I've had regular and ongoing treatments of some form or another every week or every other week.  I've had several different types of chemo,  infusions and oral medication.  I've had different immunotherapy infusions and targeted therapies.  I've had radiation several times in different areas.  All of these treatments had side effects of some sort or another, some horrible and some not so bad.  But I have to say, with all of that said,  I feel very blessed to still be here, to have outlived typical life expectancies and to have beaten the statistics typical for my diagnosis.  

Up until last winter the cancer continued to spread but the progression was relatively slow over and was limited to my bones.  Unfortunately a PET scan in January  (2017), showed the bone metastases were extensive.  It revealed several mets to my cervical,  thoracic and lumbar spine.  Additionally,  there are mets on my skull, jaw, sternum, ribs, pelvis, hips, and shoulders.  Not only that but now it showed "widespread lymph node involvement ". Meaning that the cancer is getting more aggressive and not responding to treatments any more.  I've had a couple different types of chemo since then to try and stop the progression and shrink existing mets.  The chemo I started in April seems to have helped some as far as slowing and shrinking goes.