I am having chemo to reduce my tumour and will have surgery after. While I was at my LGFB session yesterday I got talking to 2 ladies who are doing things the same way round. They were at about the same stage as me (halfway through chemo) but they had both had a staple put into their tumour to enable the surgeon to be able to locate it if it shrinks very small. This got me worried as I had never even heard of this and my onc said yesterday that my tumour has only shrunk from 4.4cm to 3.something. At the time I was quite pleased with this but having spoken to the other ladies I’m worried that it is not shrinking much and certainly not enough to have a staple put in in case they can’t find it! I don’t know if theirs was perhaps smaller to start with.
Has anyone else had this done and what size was the tumour before?
Hi Buzzy I had a metal marker put into my tumour just before chemo started ( it was described as about the size of a small staple by the Radiologist). I also had 4 tattooes to mark the outside borders of the tumour. These were marked by u/s. In my case the tumour was thought to be 12mm but the position was a problem as it was between 2 quadrants.I had chemo first in the hope of shrinking the tumour. In the event MRI scans after 3 then after 6 chemos seemed to show no change. I had surgery ( and there was still the possibility of more chemo after that too) and the tumour had shown partial response to the chemo but was bigger than anticipated 21mm.The surgeon even came to see me the morning after surgery to tell me that he thought there had been a response, as he knew I was so upset at there seeming to be no change in the tumour.It sounds like your tumour has shrunk quite a bit over 25%.So my point is that the other ladies may have had smaller tumours to start with and I think a lot depends on grade of BC too. Have you asked your Onc about this?It is worrying when we find that someone else’s treatment plan is so different from our own but our surgeons and Oncs do take each of us as indidviduals. Hope this helps.No use me saying try not to worry but if you can find out the reason that may help. Hugs coming your way. Jackie
Thanks Jackie. I will ask my onc next time I see her. Think I might give the BC nurse a call tomorrow too.
Hi,
I’m having hormone therapy (Femara and Zoladex) to try and shrink my tumour before surgery (hopefully just a WLE). It was/is about 4cm but I still had a marker put in. I’m only 6 weeks into therapy, but it doesn’t seem any smaller to me yet, but it is early days. I am booked in for an ultrasound in late November and then my onc will review things in early December (after 12 weeks). I presume by then he will be able to tell if it is working or not. I hope so, as the alternative would likely be mastectomy after all, or try chemo to shrink first.
Julie