Mom just diagnosed + brain mri results

Mamajan0504

Hi all,

Regret to say my mom has joined the ranks and was diagnosed with infiltrating ductal carcinoma, grade 3 with necrosis.

Her summary:

In total, the area of the 2 masses and the calcifications that were biopsied measure 6.8 x 4.0 x 3.7 cm (CC x AP x TR). Given the results of the 3 biopsies, this may represent one large area of involvement of a mass with associated calcifications.

She gets her PET scan Monday and meets the oncologist next Friday. I was able to get her in for a brain MRI and the results came in today. Not terrible but not great:

Enhancing slightly expansile lesion in the right parietal calvarium concerning for metastatic disease given the provided clinical history of breast cancer.

Anyone have similar work ups/have any advice for what to expect? Thank you very much in advance

DebAL

hello, I'm sorry for your mom's diagnosis. I'm sure you will get helpful responses from other members. Hopefully you or another supportive family member can sit in on the oncology appt. Take care

moth

Hi mamajan, IF that is confirmed to be a brain metastatis, your mother would be what's called de novo stage 4

What are the hormone markers on the biopsy? That will drive the treatment decisions as different hormone marker breast cancers respond to different therapies.

If it is a brain met, there are treatment options for that - surgery or gamma knife or whole brain radiation. Then they would do sytemic treatment.

I think you need to hang on for a bit, get the results of the PET & figure out if this is a brain met or not...that will determine prognosis and treatments. I hope the brain lesion turns out to be nothing.

sending best wishes

Mamajan0504

Thank you for your kind words, I’ll be sure to send my dad with her and phone in on speakerphone as well!

Mamajan0504

Hi Moth,

Thank you so much for all the useful information! She is ER-, PR-, HER2+ which is why I pushed for the brain MRI actually. I truly hope it’s nothing as well, I’ll be sure to take your advice and sit tight. I learned from my own cancer journey that premature worry is almost as stressful as relying on Dr. Google so I’ll do my best to play the waiting game instead. Happy new year and take care!

moth

There's a section here on BCO which you might want to share with your parents so they can read ahead of time. The more they read & prepare the more things the doctors says will make sense & the better questions they can ask

https://www.breastcancer.org/symptoms/diagnosis

NCCN also has patient booklets on treatment guidelines. They have one for both Invasive breast cancer & metastatic breast cancer. I don't know if they'll want to read the metastatic one until there is confirmation of mets ... different people respond differently. The info in the NCCN is also excellent https://www.nccn.org/patientresources/patient-reso...