Hello everyone!
I had my operation in Nomember and after it I was told that there is a threat that cancer can come back even if I go for radiotheraphy.
The doctor never mentioned a chemotheraphy as an option for me!
But he suggested a second operation to cut off the whole breast and do the reconstruction.
I am not about to go for a consultation with the surgeon.
I don’t want to have the second operation if I can avoid it.
But maybe the doctor knows best???
Please, any comments will be welcome.
Thank you in advance!
One thing I have learned since my dx in Nov 2008 is that treatment is very individual and there are never any guarantees that it won’t come back.
There do seem to be some general principals though. If you have the choice of having the lump or the whole breast removed, the general principal is that lumpectomy plus radiotherapy is as good as mastectomy at preventing a recurrence. But neither operation can ensure that it won’t come back.
Chemotherapy itself carries some risks, so they decide whether or not to offer it to you by balancing risk and benefit. In my case, the potential risk was greater than the potential benefit so it was never an option for me either.
Can you have a chat with your breast care nurse? Perhaps you could go through your pathology report with her or your oncologist and ask how what was found relates to your treatment.
hi zena… you can ask for more time in making your decision… there is a useful leaflet produced on here which helps you to make sense of things and what questions to ask about the grade and stage, node involvement etc breastcancercare.org.uk/upload/pdf/pathology___feb_08_0.pdf
as for decisions on chemo that can often depend on your age as well as the type of cancer and your hospitals local policy.
tbh there is nothing that is 100% effective at preventing it coming back, everything is about reducing the risk, but the risks of preventing it coming back have to be weighed against the risks of having the treatment too… so have a good discussion… make a list of questions… take somebody with you to help you remember the answers, write down what your told and if you want you can also ask for a copy of your pathology report but you may be charged a fee for this.
as for going for further surgery if hes already done a lumpectomy do you have unclear margins? this is where there are still some cells near the edge of the lump they removed… often they can just do a further excision ie operating on the same bit and removing more tissue from the same area but not removing the whole breast.
good luck with your appointment… you can ask for a second opinion too if you dont feel happy with what your being told from this doc.