New - Diagnosed Months Ago But No Treatment Yet

keepsake

Glad I found this online community. I am handling all this alone and would appreciate input and support from other women who were diagnosed with breast cancer, too. This experience is not easy to go through alone.

Diagnosed with triple positive IDC (6 mm) and DCIS, but have not had treatment yet. Timeline - I had my diagnostic mammo the first week in August and a needle loc excisional biopsy one month later in Sept. After biopsy, I had an MRI which showed a second IDC (3mm) in same breast. Three weeks after biopsy, I met med onc and rad onc for first time. Decided I did not want lumpectomy w/ rad. I chose mastectomy with reconstruction and chemo with Herceptin. My treatment has been delayed because I had to wait 5 weeks after meeting med onc in Sept. for my initial appointment with PS, which was today. Surgery is scheduled for mid-November - 3 1/2 months after my annual mammo. I am anxious about having had to wait so long for my treatment to begin, especially since I am Her2+. Should I be concerned?

doxie

While it is not ideal that you have to wait this long before surgery, it appears that the tumors are still small. Many of us are first diagnosed with much larger ones and still have to wait another month or two for surgery.

What is good, is the HER2 is very successfully treated wit Herceptin.

inks

While I was not HER+ it took 6 months until I got the diagnosis. Your invasive part of the tumor is tiny. You need to take the time to make right decisions and select the best doctors. And even so your timeline from diagnosis to surgery is very similar to mine. Try to stay positive as you wait for the surgery.

JBeans

It doesn't sound ideal but similarly to inks your timeline is also similar to mine. My surgery was nearly exactly 3 months after my mammogram. In my head it couldn't come fast enough.

Good luck!

ksusan

My timeline was about 3 months from mammogram to surgery.

keepsake

Thanks for the replies. I know that I am very fortunate to have the doctors I selected - they're an excellent medical team at a top-notch facility. I couldn't have better doctors. The waiting for surgery is hard, and just as JBeans said, in my mind, it can't come fast enough.

marijen

Once the IDC is in the lymph nodes it can spread to the rest of the body, taking out the whole breast does not cover that. Femara can slow it down but who's to know if it has spread? I don't see a CT Scan or Pet Scan for mets mentioned?

BarredOwl

Hi:

So far, this appears to be very early stage disease. A sentinel node biopsy will probably be done concurrently with mastectomy as part of the staging process. Meanwhile, please note that many Stage I and II patients do not receive PET or CT scans in the absence of clinical symptoms of metastatic disease, and current consensus guidelines for clinical stage I-IIB disease indicate such additional studies be considered only if directed by signs or symptoms. See e.g.,

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/836945#vp_2

In case that link requires registration, you can google the title of the article to access it without registration:

Imaging for Distant Metastases in Early-stage Breast Cancer

See also, Item #3:

http://jco.ascopubs.org/content/30/14/1715.long

Keepsake:

You could also try posting your question in this thread, frequented by ladies with small HER2+ tumors, to see what their experiences were.

https://community.breastcancer.org/forum/80/topics...

The posters at that thread tend to have HER2+ T1a and T1b size tumors:

T1a Tumor > 1 mm but ≤ 5 mm in greatest dimension

T1b Tumor > 5 mm but ≤ 10 mm in greatest dimension

BarredOwl

Penzance

Thanks very much BarredOwl.

Keepsake, I don't think waiting is such a big deal, and I would rather go with doctors I have selected, and that I trust, rather than with the first ones available. Like car driving: better to wait at a junction for your road to be clear than to try and barge your way through!