Im new to this site and found out that my mom has breast cancer again! she has had her right breast removed and all was well when about a month ago she found another lump.(oh no) results came through and she has it back in her limf glands she is just about to go for chemo and doctor told her they can not remove the cancer just reduce it (what).
As you can imagine me and my brother and sisters are distraught at the thought of loosing our mom.
I hope this makes any sense i’m just very confussed at the moment.
It must be very worrying to know your mum has been diagnosed yet again with this wretched disease. I do wonder if you have fully understood what the doctor has said though. It sounds very unusual to me for her to be told they cannot remove the cancer - normally they would along with the lymph nodes. They do sometimes treat with chemo first to reduce the lump, and then depending on how it reacts go on to surgery after chemo is finished. You will find from the replies that you get here that there are many of us who have had new tumours/recurrences and are still doing well after many years so try not to be too fearful. I was diagnosed 18 years ago and have a few hiccups along the way but still going strong.
Do you know which lymph glans your mum has cancer in? If the cancer is in the nodes near her collarbone and/or in several areas there then she may well not be able to have surgery.
Did she have senitinel node removal or axilla clearance first time round? (Sentinal node removal means a few lymph nodes were removed from her axilla-armpit- axilla clearance means most of the nodes were removed.)
Your mum may have a regional recurrence (I have one…hence know about them) and in some cases of regional recurrence surgery is possible and in some its not. If surgery is not possible then the cancer is still treatable but not considered curable.
Hope this helps…but yes talk to your mum’s medical team (with her permission of course.)