Just diagnosed with hers+ not yet staged

Nurses24

Hi all. It's been pretty scarey to know it's in lymph. Don't know yet what stage I'm in. Will learn after MRI. My breast doc doesn't want to remove breast or lymph in armpit. But I don't agree. I'm so scared becuz of chemo. I work and am alone. Everyone I read here gets breast removed. I hear also removing breast can spread cancer cells. Did anyone opt to keep breast that can tell me how they might have responded to just chemo

Meow13

I think almost everyone has at sometime had a lumpectomy or mastectomy. Some have chemo before surgery to reduce the tumor size, others have it after to kill lingering cancer cells.

You can always get a second opinion on your treatment.

Good luck, hopefully mri will not find cancer spread.

SpecialK

nurses24 - Is your surgeon saying he doesn't want to do surgery at all? The reason I ask is that once you are clinically staged, and knowing already that you are node positive and Her2+ - correct? - the standard of care in the US is to do chemo with targeted therapy of Herceptin and Perjeta, then do surgery, so I am wondering if that was a misunderstanding. The type of surgery you have is dependent on the size of the tumor compared to the size of the breast, and your wishes, of course.