Has anyone else been diagnosed with three different types of breast cancer at the same time?
I have invasive ductal and micro papillary in my left breast, and invasive lobular in my right.
I am waiting to see the reconstruction nurse on Monday and then the surgeon on Friday. I’m going to have a double mastectomy and am considering a diep flap reconstruction, but have a vertical scar from my belly button down from a previous surgery, so it may not be viable.
If I can’t have the diep, I’d love to hear if anyone has had a double LD without implants, how has this affected your back strength and any shoulder issues.
I have had thyroid cancer and a borderline ovarian tumour in the past, so am on the list for genetic testing.
What a sh*t show! It doesn’t feel real, and I’ve not even cried about it yet.
Any advice, or reassurance would be very welcome x
Hi Alex,
I was diagnosed in June this year. The initial diagnosis was that I had an invasive lobular carcinoma and an invasive ductal carcinoma in the same right breast. A further MRI revealed they were larger than first thought and together spanned 9cm across my breast. They also found several satellite rumours in the same breast too. ER/PR positive and HER 2 negative.
I chose to have a unilateral skin sparing Mastectomy with a DIEP reconstruction. My surgery was 10 weeks ago and went really well, with no complications after.
However, the biopsies following surgery revealed I also had a small amount of macro papillary carcinoma within the ductal carcinoma. This didn’t seem to phase my consultant, but it did mean deciding the next course of treatment wasn’t straightforward, so he sent the samples to America for an Oncotype test. The results took 5 weeks to come back, and as you can imagine it was another nervous wait, purely because I was worried I may need chemotherapy after all.
Well, the wait was worth it!
Last week I met with my consultant for the results. I got the best news I could have hoped for! Both tumours came back as low risk of recurrence and there would be no benefit to me to have chemotherapy. My consultant said, I have a 1 in 20 chance of recurrence, and at my age (54) , I have as much chance of dying of old age as I do of the breast cancer.
I meet with my Oncologist tomorrow to plan radiotherapy. The radiotherapy will be for 3 weeks, followed by Letrozole for 10 years and Ribociclib for 2 years.
I hope this gives you some hope that there is light at the end of the tunnel Alex. Your team will have a plan for your treatment, and once you know what that looks like you will feel a sense of relief, and most importantly, you will be able to plan things in your life again.
Wishing you the best of luck with your treatment x
I think the time waiting is really difficult, all the what ifs and anticipation in my head.
Unfortunately I’ll need a double mastectomy as I have it in both sides, which isn’t great (but I’m keeping as positive as I can understand the circumstances) and keeping my fingers crossed for no chemo as they don’t think it’s in my lymph nodes. Hugs from me xx
You’re absolutely right! The waiting is the worst, but a necessary evil to decide the best course of treatment that will cure you.
I forgot to mention, my MRI showed no lymph node involvement but after removal of the sentinel nodes during surgery, one node out of three showed macro matestesies. This was removed of course, and presently my consultant says I am cancer free. The radiotherapy is to mop up any rogue cells that could be lurking in the local area.
Fingers crossed you prove to be a good candidate for a DIEP reconstruction, it really is amazing! My surgeon said he was pleased to see I had been nurturing my tummy well for this event. xx
It’s been 8 weeks since my skin sparing double mastectomy (nipple removal )and immediate diep flap reconstruction. There’s been a couple of hiccups along the way, with fat necrosis which needed surgery to clean it out.
I had invasive lobular in my right breast which apparently was peppered with cancer, and invasive ductal cancer with a subtype of micro papillary in the left breast. This was sent off for oncotype DX testing which came back with low scores of seven on one side and 13 on on the other. (No lymph nodes involved) So thankfully I don’t need to have any chemotherapy. I’ve got my oncologist appointment in a couple of weeks to discuss taking anastasol, which I am a little worried about due to all the bad reports about it. It. However, I will give it a try and see if I can tolerate it. Has anyone got any suggestions for specific questions that I should be asking the oncologist?
The next step after this is nipple reconstruction and then tattooing for the areola, then hopefully I can get on with the rest of my life!
I had a bilateral mastectomy with LD reconstruction in July. I couldn’t have DIEP reconstruction due to previous c-section scar. I did all of the exercises I was supposed to do after the surgery and made sure to keep my arms moving as much as I could. It took a while for strength to return to my arms and back, but I haven’t suffered from any issues with my shoulders. I’m still working on building my back muscles back up as this does take time and patience.
I do have implants, but these haven’t been inflated yet as I started chemo soon after surgery. So right now, I just have LD reconstruction I start my implant inflation process in a few weeks as I finished chemo on 23rd Dec
Good luck with your treatment. The most important thing is to be kind to yourself throughout it.
xx
I start my implant inflation process in a few weeks as I finished chemo on 23rd Dec 