I love seeing the posts on social media showing “this is me now”…but… so many of these wonderful women are “now” stage 4. It’s completely freaking me out. I had stage 2, grade 2 IDC and coming up to my first year scans since diagnosis. Should I just be preparing myself for the inevitable; that they will tell me it’s back or a new primary? So many of the amazing women sharing their stories were of similar grades. Maybe I need to adjust my outlook? It just feels like this will be my path too, as it was theirs. Does anyone else feel so scared too? 
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@phoenix5 My heart goes out to you, so many of us feel the same as you, at the moment take one day at a time, be kind to yourself.
Appointment, surgery, ,treatment, take a very big toll on us, also we don’t always trust good news, waiting time is endless,
Time to relax, take small step and set goals, everyone cancer is different, not all treatment fits one size. Very easy for me to say please try to be positive.
Wishing you well, health and happiness going forward please keep posting letting us know how your getting on
With the biggest hugs Tili 
@phoenix5 no doubt it is a concern for anyone who has had any form of cancer, not just breast cancer, and it certainly occupied me for 12-18 months after diagnosis BUT it is pointless to live the whole of your life in fear about something that may not happen. There are no hard and fast facts about stage 4 incidence but I have seen 30% bandied around a lot, including by Liz O’Riordan. It probably isn’t quite that high these days due to more targeted therapies coming on stream however, if you take that as a wet finger in the air, that means 7 out of 10 women will not develop metastases, which are reasonable odds. On a personal level, were you given any indication of potential recurrence? If you had an Oncotype test, it gives a percentage estimate of recurrence but not every one gets an Oncotype test ( I didn’t qualify for example). Whilst Predict is about survival, not recurrence, it gives a percentage estimate of how many people of your age with your histology die of breast cancer within 15 years after diagnosis, which is another way of indicating your chances of not being one of them. But I think this sense of doom, which I shared too for a while, is really about the lack of control that we have over our own lives. Something unexpectated and frightening swoops in, turning our lives upside down, and it’s difficult to accept that we can ever be free of it, that we can ever truly relax. But that’s exactly what the vast majority of women who have had BC experience - it is dealt with and never comes back. It’s hard to process on your own, could you - if you haven’t already - discuss this with your GP who should have recommendations of counselling and support groups locally? Talking therapy would be the biggest help for you, I think. I am soon coming up to my four years anniversary of diagnosis (out of the blue after a routine mammogram) and, these days, I don’t think about it or recurrence that much. On the days that it flits in to my mind, I say to myself that if it happens I’ll deal with it then but I am not going to waste the precious time when it hasn’t happened, by worrying about it. I hope you can get some emotional equilibrium in due course.