Hi,
I am 32 years old female and was diagnosed with TNBC in my right breast in March 2023. At the time of diagnosis I was staged at Stage 3 with alot of my lymph nodes positive for metastasis. I underwent neoadjuvant chemo with keytruda. The treatment was really rough and landed me in the hospital thrice due to keytruda induced colitis. I had to stop my treatment and go for surgery (single DMX) early because colitis was at a point where my body couldn’t take any more systemic treatment and the doctors couldn’t keep waiting. By some miracle despite the early surgery I was PCR at surgery and I went back to take remaining 4 ACs. 2 ACs landed me back in the hospital and I willingly opted out of taking the remaining AC cycles. Did my radiation and hoped it would be enough. Finished all my treatment by Dec 2023.
Fast forward to May this year I went for my annual mammogram which picked up a small suspicious finding in my left breast (healthy breast) and turns out it is TNBC again. I was shocked and devastated to find out I had cancer within less than a year. Fully body scans revealed no distant spread. Because the tumor size was small they decided to do surgery first followed by chemotherapy. Because the imaging showed no affected lymph nodes I decided to go for mastectomy to avoid radiation later. I just received my surgical pathology today and while the tumor size is still small 1.3 cm, 1 out of 4 lymph nodes removed has macrometastasis. Reading the report just sent me into a spiral especially words like extensive lymphovascular invasion and a high Ki 67. I feel so defeated right now. I am a hopeful person but today it feels very hard to hope. It feels like this cancer is so aggressive it will take me out eventually. The doctors say it is a new primary tumor and not a recurrence but they haven’t seen this case alot in their experience that is a new tumor forming so early after treatment. Usually it takes a few years. Is it really that uncommon? Do I still have a shot at beating this?