Today was the day of reckoning -- at least half the tests came back. We had an appointment first with surgical oncologist, followed up with medical oncologist to discuss treatment options. George filled out half the notebook with notes..."The cancer is a 4 cm invasive ductal carcinoma. Ductal means it started in the lymph glands, invasive means it spread to the breast. The tumor in the lymph isn’t strictly measured, it’s 2mm in the biopsy, but that’s just the part that was in the biopsy. The cancer is triple negative, which means it doesn’t respond to 3 hormones, estrogen, progesterone and human epidermal growth factor (HER2). It should however respond to chemotherapy."
Surgery on the breast will probably be a lumpectomy, just the cancerous part of the breast, rather than mastectomy, complete removal, unless genetic testing reveals a hereditary tendency towards cancer. (still waiting on results) Lumpectomy would be about 2 weeks recovery, mastectomy would be 2-3 months recovery."
Well, there are three options:
One: 6 months of chemotherapy, every three weeks for 4 hours each and every week an additional hour of immune treatment. After half a year of chemotherapy, the surgery of hopefully reduced tumors and limited lymph nodes and another year of milder oral chemotherapy (depending on the overall outcome)
Two: much more extensive surgery now, with removal of several lymph nodes (up to 24) which might result in lymphoma, followed by chemotherapy for 1 year
Three: with no treatment projected death within six month to a year
It looks like we picked door number one for now.
