Hi i was just wondering if anyone can clarify this for me.
Yesterday i went to the breast unit to be told that as i had had a mastectomy i was classed as a moderate risk of cancer returning! Apparently if i had left the breast i would have been high risk! Just wondering where they get their information from.
Two years ago after my surgery i was told i had an 83% chance of surviving 5 years, i immediately thought i had a 17% chance of not making it! What is this 5 years all about, i know so many friends and family who are still around 15 and 20 years post diagnosis and they were told they were told their chances of surviving 5 years were much less!
I am also having a papilloma on my remaining breast removed, it is not cancerous so cant think why it has to come out!
Two years on and they still continue to dumbfound me!
Best wishes to everyone
Suzy
Suzy
Statistics ! they dont tell us the truth…I think I am a little out of step with some peoples thinking on this so take my thoughts with a pinch of salt
83 % chance of being alive in 5 years means nothing…you may have 100% chance or 0% chance, you dont really know where you personallay stand. All it gives you is a very general idea of what you might expect. I completely understand you asking about the 17%, if someone said I had a 17% chance of winning the lottery I would be out there buying tickets!!
Also i think that the whole process of diagnosis and study has moved on alot from 20 + years ago. People were told they were finished when they weren’t !!
Moderate risk probably comes from size of tumor, ER status, vascular invasion yes or no, and HER status. YOu can look all these things up on line but I would not get too hung up on it as the statistics never tell the truth for an individual.
take care.
Cathy
Brilliant Cathy
You really put that in perspective, I do hate these statistics being bandied around, when i first had my diagnosis i remember coming on here and someone saying that most of the people who were told they were in the 80% + were all dead, that totally freaked me out! My son had to travel 22 miles to come over and calm me down!
Yes my cousin was told 11 years ago things were not good for her but she is still around and better than ever, they did not always do lymph node removal or mastectomy then, so although her’s was an aggressive cancer she had her chemo and rads went on Tamoxifen for 5 years and now you would never know she had ever had the disease! I know of so many people in the same situation, that is why i can never get my head round all these figures and stats, love the bit about the lottery lol!
My breast unit has not told me what my ER status is or HER or anything they seem to think it is better for us not to worry our little heads about it and leave it to the big nice doctors to worry about! I am on Arimidex so guess i am ER+ ! And then they wonder why we trawl the interntet terrifying ourselves searching for knowledge! Thank God for this site, some of them out there are really dodgy.
Thanks for that
Suzy
The way I look at is:
If there are 100 people with your kind of breast cancer (size, node involvement, er and her2 status etc) then 83 of them will be alive in 5 years time and 17 of them will be dead.
Five year statistics don’t tell us how many more of the lucky 83 will be alive at 6 years, or 10 years…
What you can’t know is whether you’ll be in the lucky 83 or the unlucky 17.
Jane
Very true Jane, i have followed a lot of your postings and you also speak with great common sense. I guess it is really all random, shame they have to mention stats to us though and not the important things that we really need to know, like lymphodema, my surgeon still says it does not exist!!! Yet she prods and wobbles my underarm and calls it fat! Thank God for my GP surgery who put me in touch with the lymphodema nurse.
I was first told by the breast nurse that as i was lobular i had a 50/50 chance of it coming back in the other breast, so is that moderate? Who knows!
Thanks to you both for answering the best you can
Suzy