lymph node involvement

My onc thinks that I have lymph node involvement in the omentum and lesser hepatis, these seem to be in the stomach. Largest one is approx 1"x1". After much discussion still not entirely sure what this means or how serious it is. He is planning to scan again in 2 months and if it has grown, back to chemo again. Is this better or worse than having it in a specific organ, will it come to be stomach cancer for instance. There are times when I think that all the knowledge I have acquired has completely disappeared through my sieve of a brain!

Hi Celeste

I think its always difficult ot wiegh up ‘seriousness’. I have possible node involvement in para aortic nodes and massive node involvement in chest wall and neck. Usual thinking is that major organs is the biggy problem but actually its more complex than that…one important thing is how well cancer responds to treatment…and how quickly it grows.

Sometimes breast cancer just spreads through lymph system througout body…and if cancer not controlled then all kinds of problems can occur…my neck nodes have damaged both my eye and my voice and if they continue to grow there are some very nasty life threatening things they can do… not much written about in the literature on secondary breast cancer and difficult to get info on.

Jane

Thanks Jane, just one thing when you say ‘massive node involvement’ are you talking about the size of node or the number of nodes involved. Given what you’ve said and the damage that can be done, does anyone know if it is a reasonable ‘ask’ to wait two months to see if it’s growing or increasing.

‘Massive’…I just meant that I have so many tumours in my neck and chest wall and internal mammary nodes that I’ve lost count…some are contained in nodes, some matted together across several nodes. At my last scan I have some areas of tumour measuring 2cm, some measuring 5 cm, some seem to be invading soft tissue.

Yes it may be reasonable to see if the size increases. Apparently chemo works best on rapidly dividing tumours; if stuff growing slowly then waiting may be better than immediate treatment.

Mind you the damage to my voice came out of the blue…one day I was talking normally, the next day I wasn’t. No one ever warned me this could happen, have barely seen it referred to, it is unusual with breast cancer apparently, but not unknown.

I am now beginning to gather more information from hospice about how the regional tumours alone could and may kill me…but perhaps this is a bit too much info for this forum! The hospice get quite a few cases of people with neck and head cancers, whose disease trajectory may be more similar to me than mine is to usual breast cancer sites of mets.

Jane

Thanks Jane, - I don’t know about too much info for this forum - surely not. In any event I would be very interested in the answer.