Routine MRI

It's been four years since my initial DCIS diagnosis & three years since the "change out" of my expanders to implants. I have been being followed by my breast surgeon every three months the first year out & then every six months the past two years. I saw him last two months ago, he did a breast exam & found nothing & said I didn't need to continue to be followed. I was ok with that because I still was being followed by my plastic surgeon, Dr.Quetell. I saw him every three to six months also. I saw him last month & he said he liked to order MRIs three years out to make sure implant is intact. He said there are no standards that require it, but he is super through & cautious & I appreciate that even more now.
So in I went for an MRI 2 weeks ago, first time for me, but I was calm, it was fine, and life went on, until I got two messages on my cell phone from Dr. Quetell at 9pm at night. I was at a play having a great time with my sister. I called the good Doctor while driving home, speaker phone for safety, when he told me the initial news, "There was a suspicious finding on the MRI, right near the site of the last DCIS." I would go in to see Dr. Quetell the next day for an exam & for us to look at the MRI. That evening I did a self exam & sure thing, I could feel something, it was hard, moved, not sore, & felt like penne pasta. Staying positive I thought of things it could be that wouldn't be bad. It's my choice to think of all the negative things or all the positive things it could be, why not choose the one that lets me sleep!
Worked the next day and went to see Dr. Q. afterwards, he felt it too, it was about 2cm when he measured it. No way to know what it was & rather than waste time on a biopsy, he scheduled me for another lumpectomy the following week.
It could still be nothing.
Lumpectomy went an hour longer than expected, I came out with much bigger incision than expected & another drain, really? That all wasn't jiving with it being nothing, but let's wait for the pathology to get back. And wait we did, all weekend.
Follow up appointment this past Monday with Dr. Q. & unfortunately the news is not what we wanted to hear. It was invasive breast cancer, the REAL one this time. How do you get breast cancer when your breast are removed? That is the question in people's mind, but not one you want to ask. Apparently, the breast surgeon the first time left a lot of breast tissue, not to fault him, it is hard to tell breast tissue versus fatty tissue when you are in there, but there was enough left that the DCIS was in there along with a this new cancer. Did the new one come from the left behind DCIS cells, was it totally new? No one knows and both are plausible , but either way it is there.
Meet with Oncologist (Dr.Lemke) & Radiation Oncologist (Dr.Shapiro)this past Friday @ Upstate. They are awesome & spent a lot of time with Andy & I going over everything & giving us a 101 crash course in breast cancer treatment, we didn't have to do this last time, so even though it is the second time around, it's the first for this. We are quick studies & they were great teachers.
I did bloodwork for the BRACA test which looks to see if there is a hereditary component. Also sent some blood to California for the Oncotype testing which lets us know how receptive the cancer will be to chemo. We figured the more information we can get, the better to help guide the treatment. That leads us to having to do another surgery. We need to see if anything has spread to the lymph nodes. Normally, you would do a sentinel lymph node biopsy, but I did that the first time, so it's not there. There is a lot of controversy now about doing axxilarry lymph node dissections. Some think it's a bit much if you know you are going to do chemo anyways, but it can dictate how aggressive you want to be. We weren't able to meet with the Upstate breast surgery (Dr. Kort) that works with this team to discuss this more, but we will meet with her this week. We opted not to go back to the original breast surgeon.
So, at this point we know I am ER/PR positive, that is good as we know I I'll respond well to hormones, tamoxifen, once everything else is done which will decrease possibility of reoccurance. We are waiting on the HER2 finding. This will let us know if here is another hormone that will help me.
So now we are looking at scanning my body anyway they can to see where everything is at. I will get working on those this week & meet with the surgeon about the lymph nodes.
Tentative plan is: get the bloodwork back, do all the scans, do lymph node surgery, start chemo for 12-16 weeks, do radiation for 6 weeks and finish with hormone therapy.
What are you doing this Spring/Summer?