OK...I think we have a plan

JoyMrt5

Good morning all! I met with the surgeon on Friday and as of right now the plan is to have a double mastectomy. The only question that hasn't been answered is whether I will do chemo before or after the surgery. I would love to hear your experiences regarding recovery from double mastectomy and whether you had your chemo before or after your surgery.

Frog-on-the-lilypad

Hi there,

Sorry you are here, but well, you have a plan and thats a good start.

I am 40 and found my tumor randomly trying to adjust my bra. In a span of 2 weeks I came to know that I was dealing with tnbc. Read up on the net, got fixated on all thebad things. I stop myself from googling now.

Anyways, I was given a choice of surgery (lumpectomy) followed with chemo then rads or chemo first to shrink the tumor and get better margins for lumpectomy follwed by rads. Also, this gives us time to wait for the BRCA results to come in. If positive then I will go for mastectomy. Man, writing all this makes it feel so real. Sometimes, I still cannot believe that its really happening.

Anyways, so I chose to go with chemo first then surgery. Its called neoadjuvant chemotheraphy.

Here is a link which I found very handy to understand the differences between chemo first or later. http://www.clinicaloncologyonline.net/article/S0936-6555(17)30278-9/fulltext

I have finished my 3rd round of Dose Dense AC which will then be followed by 12 rounds of weekly Taxol. So far so good.

We will beat this.

KittiesWarriors

I had chemo before surgery. It seemed strange to me until my healthcare team told me that they now prefer to do chemo first so they can see that it's working. If they would have removed my lump first, then it wouldn't be there for them to see if the chemo was working or not. I just went through a bilateral mastecomy with immediate reconstructions (direct to implant) on April 24th. My surgeon went over the muscle with the implant instead of under the muscle, which is an option now. It is less painful and less recovery since they aren't cutting any muscle. I came home from the hospital the same day as surgery and took tylenol and advil the first 2-3 days but now I don't really have any pain. The drains are the worst part for me, they are itchy and uncomfortable.

Egads007

I was originally diagnosed as triple neg, and had chemo before surgery to shrink the tumour (neoadjuvant chemo). When the path came back I showed 15% ER+ (Just squeaked by). My MO didn’t give me a choice, just sent me straight to chemo. The tumour did show that the chemo worked, and had clear margins