can someone please explain what diagnosis I have received

Hi rabbit, first of all I'm so sorry you've had to join this club that nobody wants to be a member of!

The one thing (or is it two?) about your diagnosis ("dx") that I know a little about are the receptors: ER+ means your cancer cells have estrogen receptors on the cell surface -- little proteins that latch onto estrogen, so that estrogen "feeds" the growth of the cancer.  The good thing about this is that there are other treatments for ER+ cancer besides chemo.  Probably after chemo your oncologist will prescribe tamoxifen (if you are premenopausal) or maybe an aromatase inhibitor (Femara, Arimidex or Aromasin) if you are postmenopausal (though your picture certainly doesn't look like you would be!). 

HER2 is another kind of receptor on a cancer cell -- if you were HER2+, you would have these receptors, which would mean the cancer cells could be targeted by a drug called Herceptin.  But HER2+ cancers are very aggressive, so (to quite MY oncologist when I first saw her): "even though there's a treatment for HER2+, you're much better off being HER2-negative."

Others will be along soon who know more, I'm sure -- just want to wish you the very best of luck with your treatment --

hugs,

Ann

I'm so sorry you've had to join us here.  This is a wonderful site that has loads of info and support from good people.  You're in the worse spot right now...the unknown, once you get all testing done and get a treatment plan in place you'll feel more in control again.  I'll just try to add to what Ann has said.  I'm not sure if there is a pro or con to the skin thing, I had IBC (inflammatory breast cancer) along with IDC so I had a spot of redness and warmth.  I'm not sure if you have this going on or not if so, I saw mine go away once chemo started.  Doing chemo first is called neoadjuant chemo and they use that to shrink a large tumor and that helps them in getting clean margins during surgery also.  Since you have lymph nodes (LN) affected they most likely will remove those with surgery but chemo could help remove the cancer there.  I had only 5+ out of 16 with residual cancer.  They use all this info to stage you and help decide what is the best tx plan for you.  I was stage 3C, I finished chemo in Dec, had BMX (bilateral masectomy) in Jan., finished rads (radiation) in Apr and had my ooph (ovaries removed) 2 weeks ago.  It can be a long scary road at the beginning but it does get better and we're here with you because we understand and we've been there.  Hugs going your way and feel free to message me if you need to.

Hi, rabbit!

Sorry that you have to join us. :-(

My primary tumor was also close to the skin (I had five others in the same breast that weren't) and the only problem I had with it was that they couldn't get clean margins; the cancer had just invaded the skin.  After the bilateral mastectomy and lymph node resection, I followed up with chemo and radiation.  That was in 2004 and no local recurrence though I did have metastasis in a distant lymph node.  Doubtful that it was related to the skin invasion, though.

A lot of us felt much less anxious once we had a complete diagnosis and started treatment.  I agree with all of the other ER+, HER2- comments.  I started on tamoxifen after the initial chemo/radiation blast and am now on arimidex.  After the last chemo treatment in 2009-2010 (for the distant lymph node), I have "no evidence of disease" (or NED) and remain there as of today. 

Best of luck to you!  

E

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