When people think about cancer treatment, they think about chemo and the operation. I did too. Nobody really told me that I would still be going for injections a year later, with my hair back (it started growing during radiation, and I even shaved it once so it would grow evenly) and my life looking completely normal.
Seventeen injections in total, spread across almost a year. So this chapter is about that part.
What Phesgo is, and why I got it
My cancer was HER2 positive, so that is why I got this treatment.
What is HER2? It is a protein on the surface of cells, and it tells the cells to grow. Everybody has some of it. In HER2 positive cancer the cells have way too much, so they keep getting the signal “grow, grow, grow”. It is the case in roughly one in five breast cancers, and it is a big part of why my treatment plan looked the way it did. If your oncologist has just said “HER2 positive” to you, that is what it means in simple words.
The good news is that there are medicines made exactly for this. Phesgo is two of them in one injection, trastuzumab and pertuzumab (you may know them as Herceptin and Perjeta). It is not chemo. Chemo attacks fast growing cells in general, while this goes after HER2 itself and blocks the growth signal.
My first one was on 5 August 2024, the same day as my first Taxol. The nurse took a long time to explain the new medicine before she did anything, and I really appreciated that.
An injection in the thigh
I had no idea what it would be like before my first one, so here it is.
It is an injection into the thigh. Not a drip, not a line in the arm. But there is a lot of liquid, so the nurse had to push it in very slowly, otherwise it would hurt a lot. It always went well.
The first dose was bigger than the rest, like a proper boost to get the medicine started. From the second one the dose was smaller.
Did it hurt? Not really. It stung a little every time the nurse moved her finger, but nothing painful. Afterwards I got a lump in my thigh because so much fluid went into one place, and it went away fairly quickly. The second one, in my left thigh, hurt a bit more than the first, and I never found out why. Some sessions were just like that.
On the days when Phesgo and chemo fell together, Phesgo came first, then I waited thirty minutes, then the Taxol. Those were long days.
Four with chemo, thirteen without
The first four were part of the busiest time of my treatment, together with the weekly Taxol. Honestly, I barely noticed Phesgo then. It was just the small thing at the start of a chemo day.
By the fifth one, at the end of October 2024, I wrote in my diary that I had no side effects except the ones I already had. That was more or less the whole story for me. Even later I did not notice anything that was not already there from chemo (maybe I was just getting used to my new body, with some pain here and there).
What a Phesgo day looked like
After the rest of treatment was done, it was very simple. Every third week, on a Monday, at nine o’clock. I came at the time on my appointment, registered myself, and then kept an eye on the screen for my number, which told me which room to go to. Sometimes I got the same room as last time, sometimes not (they don’t have seventeen different rooms there, haha). Same with the nurses: now and then I got one I had met a few doses ago, other times someone new.
I sat in the same kind of chair as for chemo infusions, and it was always a nurse who gave the injection, never a doctor. It took a little time, but not much, and then I went on with my day.
The heart checks
One more thing I almost forgot. This medicine can affect the heart in some people, so every three months I had my heart checked.
Before the mastectomy it was easy, and my heart function was good, as they said. After the mastectomy it was harder, because the silicone makes it difficult to get a clear ultrasound of the heart. But the heart doctor said they still got good enough images to see that my heart was healthy.
My last heart check was around the same time as my two year control, so April or May 2026. The heart doctor said I don’t need any more checks, since they saw no sign that the medicine had weakened my heart. I did not expect to care so much about that news, but I did.
Going back to work in the middle of it
While the injections continued, my life came back. I went back to work full time when I still had a few doses left. On injection days I took a few hours off in the morning and went straight to work afterwards. Nothing dramatic happened that I remember. I did not take any sick leave once I was back full time, and I did not tell my colleagues. Nobody really noticed.
So from the outside, and honestly from the inside too, I was a person with a normal life. Phesgo was just something I had to put in my calendar, and it did not disturb my routine at all.
It did not limit my plans either. I did wait until I had finished every dose before any long travel, but I did not have to cancel anything because of it.
The last one
The last injection was on 14 July 2025. Number seventeen.
I think I expected to feel something big. It was the end of my cancer treatment, after chemo, the operation, radiation, a whole year of injections. But nothing special happened. I told some of my close ones. The nurse said congratulations and wished me luck, and that was it.
I did not feel anything special either, because after the radiation I already felt like the active treatment was over. And I had been working full time for a few months by then, so my life was more or less back to normal. The last injection was just the last thing on the calendar.
If you are just starting
If you are newly diagnosed and reading ahead, this part is probably invisible to you right now, and it may be a big part of your year. Treatment can continue long after you look well, and the last day may feel like nothing. That is normal, at least it was for me.
Were you on a long treatment after the dramatic part was over? Did your last session feel like a finish line, or did it just quietly happen? I would love to hear.
I’m not a doctor and I won’t give any medical advice. All I share is my personal experience based on my own treatment plan.