Had mastectomy now it's in lymph nodes

Hi. Sorry to hear you’ve not had the news you wanted today, I hope you are ok? 

So the same happened to me, I had sentinel lymph node biopsy and 1 out of 3 contained cancer so I had axillary node clearance in Feb. I wasn’t happy, another operation, another drain, hate those drains. Results came in all clear, they removed 34 nodes. The operation was shorter and recovery ok however do make sure you do the exercises they tell you to do as I didn’t and suffered with bad cording and couldn’t straighten my arm out but following physiotherapy it was much better. 

A friend of mine had the same and was told she didn’t have to have the full axillary nodes removed if she didn’t want to they would just do extra radiotherapy in that area. They never said that to me though, I wonder if it’s because I’m younger (41). 

Hi

Same here 1/3 lymph nodes positive. I was diagnosed at 44.

My surgeon gave me the choice of either full node clearance or radiotherapy.

He said as far as treatment outcomes were concerned for my particular case, they results were practically the same. So basically they were on a par with each other for success.

However, my surgeon did inform that that node clearance increased your risk of getting lymphdema by quite a lot more than having the radiotherapy. 

I opted for radiotherapy as it is my right arm, my dominant side and if possible I personally wanted to avoid lymphdema at all costs.

Obviously this treatment was what me and my surgeon agreed was best for me without compromising my health or treatment success rates.

You can always ask your consultant if it may be possible for you to have radiotherapy, if you did not want more surgery, but it may also not be possible for in your particular case for some reason. No harm in asking the question.

Good luck to you, hope this helps in some way.

Thanks so much for this. I think because all three of the ones taken out had cancer in the team think it means there's more in there so CT scan and axillary clearance followed by chemo is now the plan. I hope you're well now.

Thanks for this, the replies have really helped I felt very isolated earlier despite having a brilliant husband. I also hate drains and my drain wound was infected when I had the mastectomy, so I'm not looking forward to another one! There are obviously different practices in different areas because they told me today if I'd had one of two of the three with cancer in they'd have just advised radiotherapy. But now I have some questions for the BC team tomorrow. Thank you!