Dcis recurrence

zayb

I posted in a few other forums already, but I had my recurrence confirmed today. I was diagnosed with high grade triple negative breast cancer a little over 6 years ago in my left breast. I then had a prophylactic mastectomy of my right breastthe following year that ended up showing dcis but with good margins. Recently I found an enlarged lymph node right at the edge of where my breast would have been. It is hard to feel. Had fna last Friday, results today. Saw lots of doctors. I am having an excisional biopsy/lumpectomy (removal of the node and surrounding tissues) tomorrow. I have a pet scan next Wednesday. If that is clear, then the plan is radiation/anti-hormonals. I saw an oncologist who is new to the practice (good that she could see me right away) ...she started talking like it was a recurrence of the tnbc! But, my original oncologist called me and said this is not the case. The cancer is low grade and highly estrogen receptive and likely arose from the dcis. I will find out more tomorrow. They are assuming it is a node but also could be the tail end of where the breast tissue goes, whatever this means. I am assuming it wasn't idc the whole time since it has been 5 years since surgery. They did test to make sure it is breast cancer and not some other kind of cancer. Progesterone and her 2 pending. Oncologist seemed to think it was good news that it is not not the tnbc and is low grade. I hope he is right.

Got the her 2 ...it is negative which I figured since the cancer is low grade. For some reason the pathologist doesn't think progesterone adds much to the whole thing but is going to do it.

Jelson

hope it is from the DCIS, Glad you were on top of this. Thanks for keeping us posted.

zayb

Pretty sure this is what happened since it is 90% estrogen receptive and low grade. I am pretty flabbergasted because I didn't expect this. I had scattered dcis on the right, but all very small, some was low grade (1) highly hormone positive 90% estrogen/80+% progesterone. Some was high grade and hormone positve but not as highly (53%) hormone positive. Who would ever think invasive cancer would have the characteristics of the low grade highly hormone receptive rather than characteristics of the higher grade bits. Of course, it is no longer dcis. Apparently this happens sometimes even though it is rare to have it happen after a mastectomy. My tnbc on the left side was high grade (had 3 s for everything whatever this means) and was 0% hormone receptive. They don't think it is related to the tnbc from the pathology so far.