chemo before surgery - anyone else

Hi Pam

I had alot of DCIS in my breast and 2 areas that looked like tumors via the digital imaging from my mammograms done in November 2012.  My surgery was in December and when the path report came back, nothing had spread beyond the breast so nothing in my nodes or near the chest wall even though it was throughout 3/4 of my breast (DCIS portion) There were 2 tumors of IDC along with 2 microscopic ones as well.

Although I had to do chemo after, I didn't have to do radiation because my margins were excellent.  I'm now doing Herceptin until the end of they and Tamoxifen for 5.

Alot of women though have chemo first then surgery so don't despair.  All of this sucks but beleive it or not, getting chemo out of the way first isn't all that bad.  I just finished chemo 4 weeks ago, but I found surgery very easy and recovered quickly.

Good luck to you and keep us posted.

I'm usually on the ILC forum where it's pretty typical to find out you've got a large tumor and need pre-surgery chemo (called neoadjuvant chemo), but I still wanted to respond.  I had neoadjuvant chemo, and I'm glad that I did because I got to feel for myself the progress that was being made.  We knew that the drugs were effective on the tumor.  I still had an MX.  I knew with the ILC growth pattern described as being like Swiss cheese that it wasn't going to be safe to have a lumpectomy, but perhaps you'll be able to.  I started with a tumor that was estimated at 7 to 10 cm, and it was 1.8 cm in pathology after MX.  I too was glad to have that aspect of treatment done with first. There is SO much help here in the chemo forum to help you get through it. 

Hi, good thing about having chemo first you get to see and feel it Shrinking. I finished chemo just over three weeks ago and had scan and no Cancer. I had small lump in breast and lots of Cancerous lymph nodes, waiting for my Lumpectomy on 19th June. I never wanted a port but had terrible problems with the veins so had one half way through chemo.

Good luck you will be ok, just be kind to yourself and take one day at a time.



Alison

Hi all

I am doing chemo before surgery too.  I was diganosed January 26th. I have about 5 cm of DCIS and a 2cm mass of invasive carcinoma.  they biopsied one node that i could feel in my armpit and it was positive for cancer too.  I want a lumpectomy and my doctors felt that neoadjuvant chemo would give me the best chance to be successful with a lumpectomy rather than a mastectomy.  I did 4 rounds of dose dense (every 2 weeks) adriamycin and cytoxan and am still doing 12 weekly taxol doses.  I cant feel anything in the breast or the armpit any more so I am very hopeful that the cancer is basically dead.  It was encouraging to feel it shrink and know that the chemo was working.  they will be able to tell that the chemo worked when I have my surgery.  That is an advantage of the neoadjuvant therapy over having the surgery first.  Best wishes.

Hey Pam!  Welcome aboard.  I'm so sorry about your recent diagnosis.  I had high grade IDC when I was diagnosed.  We did chemo first.  (I did a trial first with some experimental drugs.)  As someone said above, the wonderful benefit is that I KNEW that my chemo was working.  I could feel it shrinking.  (The other way you have the surgery, and do the chemo just in case there are cells left...so with chemo first, you know that the crap you're going through with chemo is worth it.)

The other added benefit is that they may be able to do a lumpectomy if they shrink it enough (instead of a mastectomy).  I had that option, but went for the mx anyway...but that's another story.

I understand the urge to just get someone to cut it out, but I'm so grateful that I went this way.

Hi ali68 and all!

I am scheduled for surgery july 23.  I hope to find on the path report that every cancer cell is dead dead dead.  I am finishing up my chemo now, three more taxol doses.  I cant wait until all that is done.  I am growing just a little bit of hair on my head and more hair in the other places i dont really want hair.  But i am glad to have some hair grow back no matter where it is.  Gives me hope that all this will be behind me  soon enough and i will be back to "normal" before long.  I have rather small breasts to begin with but I didnt see why that should make it more necessary to have a mastectomy like my oncologist suggested.  So I am very hopeful the neoadjuvant chemo will make it so that i can have the lumpectomy. I know that the studies dont show a difference in long term outcome between chemo before vs chemo after but i just like the thought of killing the cancer beforehand and then having proof that it is dead when they do the surgery.

Ali68, good luck with your upcoming surgery! let us know how it goes. Are you working?  how long will you take off work if so?  I am planning about 3 weeks off work.  Hope it will be enough.

LynnM, wow you have been through a lot. Glad the chemo helped shrink things and sorry it didn't get the nodes clean. But my husband is a pathologist and he tells me that they can't tell live cancer from dead cancer on a slide always. They fix the tissue with preservative and if the cells in the nodes were recently dead they can't tell the difference easily. They still have to treat it as a positive node of course but it's not always clear. Sorry you have to do more chemo, good luck with things and keep us posted.

Had lumpectomy on Tuesday, won't go into details but had a lot of pain. I'm home now and taking my meds and doing my arm movements. They took out all the nodes and cut around the nipple, ten days for path report.