Treatment for small tumour

Northern100

Hi



Just a question I had a masectomy for 5cm of dcis and 5mm invasive grade 2/3. Oncotype is 20 I have done 4 rounds of dense dose ac and am on number 5 of 12 weekly taxol. Initially I felt lucky in the sense that was got so early I am forty and went for mammogram myself in my country would not be standard to go for mammogram at 40. Recently I feel very worried as I wonder if treatment is overkill for size of tumour and I also fear getting leukemia down the line from the treAtment. Oncologist did not give me a choice just said taking an agressive approach. He did say scans would not have been clear if I had not had mammogram . Family etc just feel your prognosis is good do the treatment and you be finished with it . Just I can't feel like that. Just wondering if anyone had similar oncotype or tumour size and what their treatment plan . Thank you so much for reading my post.

peggy_j

Sorry to hear you're questioning your decisions. I know that can be agonizing. For what it's worth, my experience is that this can be a normal reaction. Did I do enough? Did I do too much? We will never know. Keep in mind that each patient is different and two patients with the same diagnosis may choose different treatments for different reasons. Yes, age is an important consideration. The cancer docs consider 50 to be young, so if you're 40, I can see them prescribing aggressive treatment. Cancer aside, you have a very long life expectancy, especially compared to a patient in her 70s. (FWIW, I was Dx'd at age 46 and the biopsy orignally estimated the tumor at 7-8 mm and grade 2. At that point, all my cancer docs were saying that they'd probably recommend chemo because of my age. Surprisingly, the final pathology came as 5 mm and grade 1, and my MO dis-recommended chemo due to the grade. Her rationale is that higher-grade tumor benefit more from chemo. So, I suspect my MO would have made the same recommendation as yours if I had your exact Dx.)

But back to your concerns. When I had anxiety about my treatment decisions, I spoke to a counselor. She said the goal in decision making, in the face of all these unknowns, is to be content with the decision, no matter what happens in the future. What if you had done less and then the cancer recurred? What if you never have SEs in the future? It's entirely possible that you made the best decision in your circumstances.

If these issues continue to gnaw at you, you may want to consider talking to counselor or peer support group. I talked to that counselor just twice  (once before starting rads, and once a couple months after ending treatment) and just two conversations made a huge difference. The sessions were free through my local cancer support center.