Hi everybody.
I’ve just been diagnosed with stage 1, HER2 positive IDC and I’m waiting to start chemo. I found the lump about 6 weeks ago and wasn’t experiencing any pain. Over the last few days I’ve started to feel a general aching in my breast, accompanied by intermittent shooting pains and the lump feels bigger. Is this normal? Not sure if I’m just stressing due to the nervousness of starting treatment or I should be concerned?
I think you are in a state of shock as I was when I found a lump after getting pain and swelling in my breast for ages. It was in the left breast, where I’d had breast cancer in 2003. I just couldn’t bring myself to think I had cancer again after 19 years and I was full of aches and pains, and fears. I found the lump a long time before I told anyone as I was too busy and I couldn’t get my head round it. Everyone seemed more important than me and my health. Then I obsessed about finding out what it was and my husband was convinced it would be nothing, so I bet him £20 it was cancer. Then he kept betting me about other things he knew nothing about and if he’d had any money to pay his bets I would have cleaned him out. But he has nowt. Back to you and your breast pain. Pain isn’t often present in breast cancer. I did have breast pain years ago before I was diagnosed with breast cancer. No one suggested this could be a sign I would get breast cancer in the future. My first diagnosis was when I was 48, I am now 67 and was diagnosed again in June last year.
I think pain can be a sign that there are changes happening in the cells in the ducts. My breast pain improved a lot when I was taking tamoxifen for a time. This treatment lowers oestrogen and can stop certain kinds of tumours from growing, only if you have oestrogen positive breast cancer though I think.
I think you should mention the pain you are experiencing and perhaps your pathology report will mention whether you have something called atypical hyperplasia, DCIS or other cell changes which may cause pain in the breast. Ask the Breast care nurses if they can help too and hope you feel less anxious once your treatment gets underway. Good luck Seagulls