Celeste, am I an anomoly?

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Celeste, am I an anomoly?

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Celeste, am I an anomoly? Hi Celeste,

Don’t see your name much here anymore - maybe you’ll see this, maybe you won’t. Anyway, I finally got hold of my path notes or histology report. There’s only information on the WLE I had, nothing on what was found in the mastectomy if they even looked, but I was wondering what you (or anyone) would make of the following:

"In summary, further blocks from the wide local excision and the deep cavity wall show extensive High Grade DCIS with no features of invasion.

Although the presence of nodal metastases suggests the presence of invasive malignancy in the breast, it is recognised that in a small percentage of cases, the actual focus of invasion is not identified."

This is doing my head in. If they didn’t find the focus of invasion, might it still be in my body somewhere brewing more trouble?

I guess there’s no way of knowing - but am I an anomolous case, DCIS with nodal metastases - or are there other ladies out there with a similar diagnoses?

Hope you are well yourself, probably thinking of something else entirely - sorry!

All the best,

Bernie

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Try ask the nurse service Hi Bernie

If you don’t get detailed enough replies here I would invite you to contact the Ask the Nurse service run by Breast Cancer Care. The link is on the home page of the site.

Hope this helps

Breast Cancer Care Host

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Thanks very much Didn’t think of that, I’ll do that right now, many thanks

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unknown primary there are cases where they don’t find an identifiable primary tumour in the breast, but the fact that you have cancer in some of your lymph nodes is suggestive of there being an area which has invaded the area outside the ducts, despite only high grade DCIS being identifiable. Susan Love is good on pathology, she says they can’t possibly identify absolutely every inch of tissue by taking slides of it. So they do samples of the edges and other areas. In your case it looks like they were unable to put the area affected under the microscope. So they have assumed that some cancer got away

Mole

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Hey Bernie So Sorry not to have seen your message - I tend not to visit these forums as much these days - you can access my e mail via ‘the other site’. It seems that Mole has already answered your question and also possibly BCC . The only thing I have to add really is to ask your consultant - presumably he/she was there and may have more info in the notes.

It seems that the biggest issue for all of us who have been successfully treated for BC is the question ‘when will it come back’ - and the answer(s) to that are between ‘soon’ and ‘never’ and all those in between. Our prognosis is an indicator - but you never really can tell. So do you live your life under a perpetual cloud of fear, or do you whistle a happy song and forget all about it - the answer for me at least, is both, dependant on how I am feeling, and my prognosis is really good. Uncertainty is the hardest thing to live with I think - I suspect we have to make our own certainty.

Take care Bernie

Celeste

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Thanks Mole and Celeste For helping me out of the hole I dug for myself. I don’t go around with the idea that it will come back soon all the time. I guess I thought leafing through the notes would give me more surety rather than undermine confidence further. It didn’t turn out that way but it doesn’t change anything, I’m still struggling with the results of surgery like so many others here, getting througth the chemo with tamoxifen to look forward to (blah!) and hoping for the best as we all do, for each other and for ourselves.

All best wishes to you both and thanks for your generousity and kindness,

Bernie

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I’m like you I want a definitive answer and I have to understand what is going on. There is an awful lot of information out there and a lot of it conflicts. So it is not surprising we are all so confused.

Knowledge is power but a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. A lot of knowledge is a dangerous thing too, in my experience. In fact there is danger everywhere. Don’t go out

mole

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Ha Ha Mole! Too right Mole - Knowledge is consolation but only if you can get to the end of the labarynth - which cancer denies us of course. I often feel there’s no point venturing out on these tortured attempts to get to the end of this thing these days so I’m with you there.

I just saw the short Beckett play ‘Come and Go’ at the Barbican which shows three identically dressed women on a bench, every time one gets up and leaves the other two whisper about her health - ‘Does she not know?’ - ‘God forbid!’. At the end they all join hands ‘In the old way’. It made me think of these forums and indeed this very conversation we’re having!

love Bernie