Hiya Dilly, is the abbreviation you’re thinking of DCIS? If so, that means that it is precancerous and is contained
within the milk ducts and has not got the ability to spread elsewhere yet, so that is good news.
You did say that you have minimally invasive areas too though - I would ask what that means (minimally is a good word to hear though!)
A week and a half ago, I was diagnosed with DCIS in 2 areas of my breast and also a small invasive lump (grade 2).
If you have also been diagnosed with an invasive cancer, then I would ask what grade it is and what size it is.
Grade 1 is slow growing , 2 is medium and 3 is fast growing.
Because I have got 3 areas of precancerous or cancerous tissue in my breast (multifocal) I am going to have a mastectomy and they’ll take out some lymph nodes to investigate; but if I had only 1 small slow growing lump, then I think I could’ve had a lumpectomy (WLE). Ask how many different areas of your breast are affected and whether it is more likely that you will need a mastectomy and lumpectomy.
After surgery, I have heard that chemotherapy is quite likely no matter what they find; partly because of my age (40) and perhaps radiotherapy. I will not find out until 2 weeks after the operation (ie a months time!). This is because, cancers are complex and they need to gather as much info as they can in order to taylor treatment to suit each individual case.
They will tell me then how big it really was and the stage that it’s at (ie whether or not it has spread to my lymph nodes and potentially further in the body). I would ask whether you will be have a lymph node biopsy before surgery or at the same time as your surgery. Also ask how long after surgery will it take for them to get the histo-pathology reports back and then tell you about which treatment they recommend. Unfortunately, until these reports are back we don’t know what all the subsequent treatment after surgery will be.
Prior to surgery, you should be able to find out somefurther treatment info though. I would also ask about the receptor status on your cells. My cancer is ER positive (ER+), which means that
I will definitely be prescribed some sort of hormone therapy such as Tamoxifen after my surgery. This will hopefully, block my oestrogen from stimulating any rogue cancer cells that will be left in my body after treatment. Also ask about Herceptin status too.
This last couple of weeks, like anyone else who has been diagnosed, I have had to rapidly get up to speed with so much information about breast cancer. Every case is different, but we all go through similar emotions. I always feel a bit calmer when I get to understand what’s going on a bit more. Unfortunately the docs can’t give us all the info straightaway. Waiting is really hard!
I hope that that helps you. Feel free to ask any questions or send me a personal message (PM).
Big hugs