possiblity

Dear Many, I am going to be honest with you.  Your wives cancer is very, very serious with that amount of lymph nodes positive. She also had a very large tumor.  You have every reason to be worried.  But all this time spend being worried is not going to change the outcome, what-ever that may be. And yes, it IS a what-ever that may be.  No-one knows how long they have on this earth.  No-one.  And with all the scans, your wife has been shown to be very fortunate and not have distant spread at this time . Though it may seem bleak to you, it IS possible that your wife will live to be an old lady. Someone always, always, and always once more survives what was determined at the time of diagnosis to be a poor prognosis. Why NOT your wife? Others progress to stage IV and then continue to live years in this stage. Your wife's hormone positive and grade II cancer is good news in terms of being one of these women who could potentially live years with stage IV if she would progress to this stage (and she may never).  So perhaps thinking of it this way will help you.  My wife will be fine because it is possible..or....Yes, my wife may progress to stage IV (stage III with metastasis), but she could very well live many years with metastasis because she can be treated with hormones and because her cancer is not high grade. There IS hope for your wife. Hope that treatment will be a 100% success and hope that if it is not a 100% success, that she will still have many years with treatment.  And then more hope that during these many years, a cure will be found, or a treatment that prolongs life to its full cycle. 

Many,

I think all of us on this board know that we have a relatively high (compared to earlier stage cancers) risk of recurrence and death from this disease.  There's just no way any amount of internet searches or other people's stories of joy or tragedy can change that.  I was terribly, terribly anxious when I was diagnosed and was told before my mastectomies that I had lymph node involvement.  It's very, very scary. 

I have found that the anxiety doesn't help.  Posting is hard because I just can't tell how someone else is going to hear my words.  I don't mean to judge you, but to tell you where I've been.  I have been screaming with fear, truly screaming.  I have lain in bed running loops of unanswerable questions in my head.  I needed a lot of meds to help me through it at first.  I'm certainly not completely beyond it, or I probably wouldn't be on this board.  But I'm getting better at dealing with it.  I think part of that was consciously realizing that the the anxiety doesn't help; deep down I think I had a belief that if I screamed or ran, someone would save me.  I would get away from this thing.  But knowing I have cancer isn't a predator I can hit with a stick or run away from, so I've had to tell myself over and over that the fear and anxiety don't help.

I'm an athlete, played college basketball, love to run after long fly balls.  I started soccer too late to be skilled at it, but I truly love to play.  Ten years ago when I was 35, I had a devastating knee injury, way worse than an ACL tear.  I had three surgeries, and was consumed by anxiety, wondering if I'd ever do the things I loved again.  I became really difficult to live with.  At some point, I came to the thought that if my knee was never good again I could still do something.  Maybe not what I was used to doing, but I could do something with what I had.  I could be a goalie on a low-level rec team.  I could hang out at the 3 point line and just throw up 3's.  I'd be able to do something.  And during rehab, I could bike, I could swim, I could be with friends.  Maybe my life wouldn't be like it was before, but there was a lot of life available to me right then and there.  Then I was able to move on.  That helped me push through 1-1/2 years of rehab.  Turns out I really, really beat the odds and got back to doing everything I was doing before. 

My knee was nowhere near as serious as my breast cancer, nowhere near as scary.  The words I heard were not "You have cancer" but "It's positive."  I will hear my doctor's voice in my head forever.  It's a horrible, horrible thing to hear.  And being stage III is a cruel shock. 

None of us here will be able to tell you your wife will be fine.  But none of us will be able to tell you she has no hope, either.  What will be, will be.  You can do lots of things to affect that outcome, and it sounds like you and your wife are doing all you can do, but none of us can predict our futures.  I really think of that  a lot:  both in a general way like AnaCortesGirl mentioned and in a more specific breast cancer way.  Yes, any of the people I know could have something terrible happen and die within the next five years.  But honestly it's a lot more likely to happen to me than to most of the rest of them.  Still, it helps me none to obsess about numbers and probabilities (I don't need them as motivation to do make changes in my life).  

When I get really scared about dying, sometimes I say to myself "But you're here right now."  My partner and I have also discussed this openly.  I am so, so thankful she can do that.  It wouldn't help me to hear "you'll be fine," because I don't know if I will be.  But it does help to talk about right now, knowing that we're afraid, acknowledging that, but being here in this time now.