Chemo necessary before surgery??

So sorry for your diagnosis.  It's quite a shock, but you will get through your treatment with flying colors.

I agree with Susan.  I was also Stage 2 and had ACT chemo before surgery (12 weekly Taxols, then 4 ACs every 2 weeks).

It is definitely recommended that everyone with a TNBC tumor that is 5 mm or larger get chemo.  Timing-wise and survival-wise, it doesn't make too much difference if the chemo is before surgery (called neoadjuvant chemo) or after surgery (called adjuvant chemo).  But it seems to me that more than half of TNBC patients have neoadjuvant chemo with TNBC instead of adjuvant.  One advantage of having your chemo first is that it enables you to observe if your primary tumor is responsive to chemo.  About a third of patients have their primary breast tumor completely eradicated by the chemo so that by the time of surgery, there is no tumor left.  That's called a pathological Complete Response (pCR), and bodes extremely well for prognosis (because if the primary tumor is so responsive to chemo, then probably any rogue cancer cells that may have left the tumor to travel around your body would also be highly responsive to chemo, and get destroyed before they can metastasize in other organs).  So having chemo first provides good information to you about how effective the chemo is.  If your tumor does not respond to the chemo you had, it can give you a chance to add more treatment or otherwise be aware of the situation.  So in my situation, I had a partial response to my ACT chemo (when I had surgery, they removed my tumor and it had shrunk significantly, but there was still residual tumor).  I therefore decided to have another type of mild chemo afterwards as sort of an insurance policy, and that has given me tremendous peace of mind.  I have no way of knowing if it was needed (perhaps my tumor never sent out little rogue cancer cells and just surgery would have cured it....but TNBC is notorious for metastasizing early which is why chemo is recommended for almost all TNBC patients).

Like Susan, I found chemo to be surprisingly tolerable.  Of course everyone has their own experience, but I never vomited, only felt nauseous about 4 half-days total.  I did feel very tired and went to bed early, had a metallic taste in my mouth, lost all my hair, and a few other complaints, but overall I kept up my lifestyle, exercised a lot, traveled, etc.  I would definitely say I was NOT miserable for 6 months at all.  Of course I was glad when it was over, but I was so grateful to have that weapon against TNBC available.  

I do recommend you might want to read a copy of the book Surviving Triple Negative Breast Cancer available on amazon.com.  I can't remember the author's name but it is something like Patricia Prijatel.  I found it extremely informative and encouraging.

Also, ask all the questions that you want on this forum.  I found this forum to be absolutely invaluable when I was going through treatment.  Take care!

Tulips