ER - 97% PR: 0%

barbiecorn

Can someone please tell me what this means?  It is on my pathology report after BMX.  Thanks.

ma111

You are ER+ and the tumor had 97% of it in it. No PR seen in your tumor. Hope this helps. With that much ER you will probably be taking Tamoxifen.

barbiecorn

Ok thank you!  But why didn't my report say ER+: 97%  - It just said ER: 97% - does that mean the same thing?  Thanks again

sheila888

You are ER+ .......like I am ER+ 90%.

I understand your question why + sign is not shown on your path report.....It's the same thing.

Good Luck 

SpecialK

barbiecorn - it means that when looking at 100 cells of your slide, 97 cells had estrogen receptors on them.  It is not always expressed as a positive percentage, just as a percentage.

barbiecorn

Thank you.  Special K - How are you doing now - your diagnosis is similar to my HER2+ - I had ILC - 2.2 cm. stage 11a - what treatment hve your had and how are you handling the treatment.  That is all so frightening.

barbiecorn

Sheila - Thank you.  What treatments have you had and how are you doing.  I am so afraid of all of this.  My only child (daughter) is getting married in June and I do not want to do any treatments until right after the wedding.  I am constantly afraid I am going to die today.  I want so much to be around for her longer.  It is just so scary.

barbiecorn

Can you tell me what side effects you have had from Tomaxifine?

sheila888

barbie....I had 4X DD A/C every 2 weeks......4X DD Taxol every 2 weeks with one year of Herceptin.

Radiation and  Femara for 5 years.

SpecialK

barbiecorn - I had a BMX (my choice, I was offered a lumpectomy), had positive SNB so i opted for a complete axillary dissection 5 weeks after my BMX, I had nerosis/skin healing issues so had 3 skin excision excision surgeries, then lost my left tissue expander because I needed to start chemo.  I did have a longer delay to begin chemo as you are discussing but it was due to 5 surgeries in 10 weeks.  I had 6 treatments of Taxotere, Carboplatin and Herceptin, every 3 weeks.  That ended last June and I had my expander re-installed on the left side.  I am post-menopausal so started on Femara in August of '11.  The only side effects I have had is some stiffness and aching when I first wake up.  Iam fine once I start moving around.  I continued Herceptin alone every three weeks until last month and am now scheduled to have exchange surgery in less than 2 weeks.

One thing I must stress - Her2+ is nothing to play with.  I know that you want to be with your daughter and enjoy all her wedding plans, but your health has to come first.  I sure she would agree.  I felt tired and bleh for a number of days after chemo, but felt pretty normal until the next one.  There are lots of medications to mitigate side effects.  I am posting this picture - it was taken at a wedding last May, 2 days after my 5th chemo treatment.  I am wearing a wig, but I felt good and had fun.  Nobody there knew I was receiving chemo except for my friends. 

SpecialK

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SpecialK

SpecialK

 

SpecialK

Sorry for the deleted posts, had some trouble with the picture!!!  Never doing that again!!!

sheila888

What a beautiful picture SK.

If you have a FB account and the pictures are there all you have to do is copy and paste it here.

My Daughter is getting married in July.

barbiecorn

Thank you specialK - you look great - I have so much to think about.  The quality of life is so important to me - I just feel that I have had HER2 all my life, ER+ and just got BMX this month at the age of 66 - It took that long to get the BC - without any lymph node involvement -another couple of months just don't seem to be an issue as far as I am concerned.  I have seen so many woman who did what they were suppose to do and still had a reoccurrence - quality of life means at lot to me especially at this time.  After her wedding in June, I will try it all!!!  Thank you again.

Outfield

Barbie, I think from your last post you may be confusing HER2 and BRCA.  HER2 is a produced by some tumour cells.  It's not a "bad" gene like BRCA-1 or BRCA-2 that you're born with; it's one of the abnormalities that a line of cells can pick up along the way on the road of becoming an invasive cancer.  It's also possible for a cancer to initially be HER-2 negative, but at the time of a recurrence have become HER-2 positive.  

Breast cancer isn't a static disease.  Mutations pile up in cells over time, and those cells become less and less normal.   One of the theories about HER-2 has been that its presence signifies a tumour that is simply further mutated away from being normal, functional cells.

Being HER-2 positive used to be a terrible prognostic sign, meaning women who were HER-2 positive had more of a chance of dying from their cancer than those who were HER-2 negative. Herceptin really changed that.  

I'm not trying to say you should or shouldn't do anything in particular, but please do discuss this with your oncologist. 

barbiecorn

Thank you Outfield for that very informative bit of information about HER2+ - Now I understand - coming to these discussion boards have made such a difference for me.  I am getting so much information and I thank everyone that have helped this novice BC survivor.  I will talk to my onc. about it.  (((Hugs))))

ma111

Barbie,

Talk to your oncologists about the wedding in June. Maybe they can do some of the chemo now, surgery right after the wedding and the rest of the chemo after surgery.

I agree that the HER+ is nothing to mess around with.

Beautiful family special K

barbiecorn

Special K - I have already had a BMX on 2/1 - my dr. said I am cancer free in that area - which I know is the wrong terminology - I had no lymph nodes involved - all margins clear - My BS wants me to do treatment merely as a preventative measure for recurrence and nothing else.  I am not saying I will not do some treatment just not until after my daughter's wedding in June.  Thank you!!!!

barbiecorn

Ma111 - I already had BMX on 2/1 - drains still in - coming out on Weds. - No lymph node involvement in my case - call margins clear - my cancer was a 2.2 cm  under 2 they do not do treatment.  .2 cm over is not that much.  My BS wants me to do treatment only as a preventative measure for recurrence of BC - That is why I am waiting until after my daughter's wedding.  I am 66 years old and if it took me this long to get BC - I consider myself lucky at this point!!!! 

mary625

Barbie--it is my understanding that there are many factors that go into a treatment decision around chemo in addition to the tumor size, so you might want to discuss those other factors with your oncologist, as well as getting the 2nd and 3rd ops before making a decision. You can see those factors on the NCCN website also. I don't have HER2+ (or at least as far as I know now but I am waiting for 2nd test results on that now). I do have ILC, positive nodes (so great that you don't!) and ER/PR positive. With tumor size of over 2 cm. at time of diagnosis, being under 50, and node positive, I was a shoe-in for neo-adjuvant chemo. I think I mentioned this to you on another thread. I mainly wanted to say to you that if you and your oncologist decide to begin treatment before your daughter's wedding, as SpecialK said and showed in her picture, it's doable. During my chemo, I traveled 4 times, sang publicly 2 times, continued to practice and sing at home, walked most days, and worked full-time. I realize you are about 15 years older than me, and I don't know how that affects things. I am not sure why I got through it with some ease, other than that I really tried to take care of myself and keep walking. I am about 30 pounds overweight, and my uneducated theory is that a little extra weight during chemo helped me keep my strength up!

barbiecorn

Mary - Thank you for your response.  I know,all of us are different no one know how we are going to react to anything.  I just feel that if I have one little bit of a twinge of a side effect with any treatment now that my daughter's wedding is coming up, I will stop the treatment.  

I think I will be in a better frame of mind after her wedding to put up with some side effects.  It may be better for me in the long run to start treatment afterwards.

I will be discussing all of this with the onc. 

SpecialK

ma111 - thank you!  The night ended in a comedy, of sorts.  By midnight, DD had fallen off her extremely high heels when the bride's BIL grabbed her out of a chair to dance and ended up on crutches with a sprained ankle, and DH lost his glasses in the shrubs outside our house - found them the next morning.  This is what happens with an open bar!  I was the only together one!

katsOK

SpecialK I have been wondering all night your remark "out of 100 cell 97 are positive"  What are the  three other cells?  Are they ER negative.   My ER is not that high so do I have ER negative cells along with the ones ER positive?  The Als will not help those cells, just adds to my worries but  nothing new I have worried about this for a while.  It seems to me if someone is not 100 percent ER positive then they would get chemo.  (I did do chemo but because my oncotype was a 27).   Also from what I gather some cells are grade three and some are grade 2 it can be mixed in the tumor.  My pathology on the biopsy was a grade 2 but on the total biopsy it was a 3.   A doctor told me it often changes on a larger sample.  Someplace I read recently said that the larger the tumor the greater chance that  the tumor would have mixed grades.  Feel like I need a course in cell biology or pathology to understand sometimes.  

SpecialK

kats - good question on what the rest of the cells are.  Everything I have read so far seems to indicate that you are one or the other, but not a mixture of both that corresponds to percentages necessarily.  That being said you can have mixed type and mixed grade within the mass.  The chemo applicability is based on specific characteristics like oncotype score, tumor size, nodal status, etc. with special focus on triple negative because surgery/chemo/rads are the only weapons.  My ER+ percentages changed from the Mammaprint biopsy sample to the surgical path report.  My BS said "positive is positive", so any percentage of ER+ gets Tamoxifen or an AI.  Is this more confusing?  I am actually going to ask this question on Thurs. when I see the MO.

Omaz

My understanding is that the ER+ refers to the percentage of cells from the tumor that stain positive for estrogen receptor.  So like SpecialK said, if you have 100 tumor cells 97 of them would stain positive for the estrogen receptor and 3 cells would not.  Those 3 cells would be estrogen receptor negative cells.  Since the PR was 0% then none of the tumor cells stained positive for the progesterone receptor.  They also look at intensity of staining which is a measure of receptor density on the surface of the tumor cells as I understand it.

pupmom

Omaz, so if one or more of those estrogen negative cells escaped into the rest of the body, it/they would NOT be affected by hormonals? Again, something else scary to contemplate.

Omaz

yorkie - I haven't seen anyone discuss that directly.  It's a great question.  I think tamoxifen blocks the estrogen receptor on any breast cells out there in the periphery.  But what about grade 3 breast tumor cells, are they still enough like breast cells for tamoxifen to work?  The AI decrease the available estrogen in the body so estrogen receptor positive cells out there wouldn't get their estrogen.  It's an interesting topic.  I think at my onc visit at the end of this month we will be talking about my switching from tamoxifen to an AI, probably femara.

pupmom

Omaz, I'm on Exemestane. My onc said probably 7 years or more on it. I have a low grade tumor. From what you wrote, maybe that factors into things. I feel like I really have too much info with too little comprehension. My husband just told me to stop researching all this. It is driving me crazy and him too, lol.

Omaz

yorkie - Yeah, I know!  I am still researching and trying to understand things.  It seems like some of the decisions are left up to us though.  For example it was up to me to decide on lumpectomy/rads vs. mastectomy - I had to research and learn in order to make that decision.  I think with cancer it is a good thing to keep learning.