Hello
Diagnosed with BC yesterday. Still in shock. Didn't ask any questions yesterday when the consultant told me news. Started reading up about it and now have loads. Until yesterday I didn't even realise thar there were different types of cancer . No idea what I've got. All I know is that its a small lump, caught early and treatable so grateful for that but worried about everything Else!
Prayers and good thoughts to you all out there.
Hello TJC17
I see you were up early this morning, no wonder as like you say, you are still in shock with your diagnosis. I can remember that feeling of realsing 'I have cancer', it's totally overwhelming isn't it?
I'm glad you have found this forum so soon in your diagnosis, I didn't find it until I was quite a way through and it made such a difference when I did.
As you say, it's a surprise to realise there are so many different types of cancer - I'm sure the vast majority of us were completely clueless at the time of diagnosis. My biggest recommendation at this stage is DO NOT use good old Google for your research. Go to trusted sites, like MacMillan, Cancer Research UK and Breast Cancer.org. Many, many other sites are woefully out of date and some come up with some ludicrous ideas of how to 'beat cancer'. To give you an idea how out of date things get, I was diagnosed nearly 4 years ago and towards the end of my treatment a new test became available, which I didn't have - things are so fast moving in the research and treatments.
You are in the worst possible time at the moment - the "what happens now?". And at the end of my treatment, I truly felt that the fear of the unknown and the treatment was much, much worse than the actual.
It sounds quite promising from what you have said that it has been caught early - this possibly means that your oncologist doesn't think that it's spread to your lymph nodes and yes, that does mean that it is treatable (although it is still treatable naturally if it has spread to the lymph nodes - which are there to 'trap' the cancer to stop it spreading around the body).. They will perform an operation to remove it (and presumably as they say it is small, via a lumpectomy (wide local excision) and then depending on the type of cancer you have - radiotherapy alone or chemo and radiotherapy.
The main questions you want answered at this stage is type (for example - triple negative, inflammatory, oestrogen positive, HER-2). This will give you an idea if you will need chemotherapy or not. The 'nicest' one is oestrogen positive because if it hasn't spread, often you don't need chemotherapy, just the operation, radiotherapy and tablets for a few years to reduce oestrogen in your body. It is also the most prevalent type. Then you want to know the grade. Grade 1 - Grade 3 (grade 1 being the most slow growing).and size of the tumour which with the 2 other pieces of information will give you an idea of what stage you are.
For instance - I had a 15mm invasive ductal carcinoma, grade 2, oestrogen positive and it hadn't spread to my lymph nodes. (I also had 54mm of DCIS - pre cancerous cells, for want of a better description - grade 3, oestrogen negative). I had a lumpectomy and radiotherapy because the treatment is based on the cancerous cells. I was Stage 1 and they used the same words "caught early and treatable".
They will confirm for definite whether it's spread to your lymph nodes after your operation as they will remove and test your sentinel lymph nodes but they will have a pretty good idea now. They told me at the start- operation and radiotherapy, so they clearly didn't think that it had spread, but obviously until they perform the operation they can't be 100% certain.
At this time, just take things one step at a time and try not to worry too much about what lays ahead (easy to say, but not do, I know!), but I certainly felt that it wasn't as bad as I feared.
Kindest wishes, Lesley
