When you have breast cancer, the best treatment for you depends on a number of factors. These include:

• the size of the tumour and whether it has spread (stage)
• how slow or fast growing it is (the grade)
• your age
• whether you have had the menopause
• whether the cancer has receptors for certain hormones (oestrogen-ER and progesterone-PR)
• whether the cancer has receptors for proteins such as HER2 (HER2+ve)

As your cancer cells don't have oestrogen or progesterone receptors, your breast cancer is known as hormone-insensitive. Hormonal treatments are not effective for hormone-insensitive breast cancers. Instead the doctors will look at the other treatments that can be effective in this situation. These include

• surgery
• radiotherapy
• chemotherapy
• monoclonal antibody therapy

For some women, the risk of breast cancer coming back is so low that, other than surgery and radiotherapy, no treatment is needed. But for many women, chemotherapy is offered. Women who don't have the hormone-sensitive type of breast cancer seem to benefit more from chemotherapy than women with hormone-sensitive breast cancer. Women whose breast cancer has more than normal amounts of HER2 receptors may also be helped by treatment with the drug Herceptin. The Herceptin is usually given at the same time as chemotherapy.

Your cancer specialist will be able to talk over your treatment options with you and answer any questions that you have.