So how do you answer the question 'do you have cancer' on forms?

HeatherJeanne

So I have LCIS and am doing the surveillance and meeting with specialists to figure out what I want to do. Everywhere I go the dreaded question lurks. At my MRI today, there it was. There is no box for, "I have a marker for high risk of cancer, but no cancer yet". I am a 41 year old woman who can't answer a simple yes or no question that is literally on every medical form.

I called my disability and cancer insurance providers to see what would be covered if I chose to take tamoxifen or if I choose PBM. When I said that I was high risk, BOOM! not covered. But the minute you say carcinoma, everything changes. Even my PCP said, "due to your history of breast cancer..."

Out of curiosity, how do you answer the question

muska

Hi Heather, you don't have breast cancer. You have an increased risk of developing breast cancer.

LCIS Explained

leaf

I say I do not have cancer. Lots of interns/docs ask questions; for example when I say I have lobular carcinoma in situ, one said of what? (what organ). Another thought I was in denial because it has 'carcinoma' in its name.

LCIS is a misnomer; it was named before they knew the pathology of the condition. It is more accurately called lobular neoplasia (which also includes ALH.) LCIS was given its name in the 1940s when they (incorrectly) thought LCIS was analogous to DCIS except in the lobules. (DCIS was first discovered in roughly the 1890s or so.)