Need some support for my senior mothers diagnosis

So sorry you have to be here. Treat her as you always have, be there for her and respect  whatever decisions she makes about her treatment.

"a form of cancer that wasn't the spreadable kind" I did not know there was such a thing. All cancers can form metastatic tumors. Is it possible you misunderstood the doctor? Do you have any other details about her tumor?

Sorry for the questions, but I don't understand how any doctor could tell you that.  

I was just thinking...did he say cancer that would not spread or that she had a tumor that would not spread?

I'm wondering if you'll be ok with not telling her and your family. Maybe you could talk to mom and let her know there's something going on, sounds like cancer but you really didn't fully catch everything...kinda true, right? I don't know Your situation, but mom is counting on you to be her ears...would it be better for her if the doctor told her or you told her? I agree with not wrecking her weekend and its NEVER anything we want to hear, or say. But, she might be able to collect questions of her own. And, you now have time to collect questions for her. Be her support, she needs you. Be true to yourself...you know what's right for her.

Is it DCIS?  (Ductal Carcinoma in Situ) Perhaps that is what you mean by "not the spreadable kind"? If so, and if your mother is 80 years old, she does not necessarily have to have surgery to remove her breast.  There are some studies being done on "watchful waiting" for DCIS, like they now do with prostate cancer.   The thing is, with DCIS, it cannot kill you.  It is bad cells that stay within the ducts, and as long as they stay there, they can never hurt you.

However, in about 20% of the cases, DCIS does break through the duct and becomes invasive cancer.  And that's the kind that can kill you.  They do not know why some DCIS spreads and some doesn't.  They have found many woman who died of natural causes that, upon autopsy, had widespread DCIS in their breasts that they never knew about.  But sometimes (rarely) you hear about a woman with DCIS who had an invasive component unknowingly, and they died.

Since DCIS is not a medical emergency, you have PLENTY OF TIME to talk to doctors, do some research, maybe find a study that will do watchful waiting if that's what you want.  Do not let anybody pressure you into making a decision. 

If it is invasive, than she should do a mastectomy, although cancer in the elderly is usually very indolent.  

Some questions you want to ask:  what is the grade of the bad cells? If it is a 3, that means that they are more aggressive and more deformed and more likely to become invasive.  What is the Bloom/Richardson scale?  If it's 8 or 9, same thing.  If the numbers are on the lower end, than the cells are not multiplying quickly and she has less danger. 

FYI:  my mother was a very frail late-70s woman who had an early stage (1) cancer in her breast.  She had a mastectomy and did just fine.  She needed no other treatment. She healed quickly.   My mother died two years later of alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver so she was not in the best of health - she was always drunk and she smoked constantly and yet the mastectomy was easy for her to recover from.  Mastectomy without reconstruction is not a difficult surgery physically.  (Adding reconstruction makes it much harder as they have to cut through muscle.)    Recovery is just a few days.  

So, if she must have one, and she doesn't want a reconstruction, it shouldn't be too difficult for her.

However, I would suggest that you get a 2nd and 3rd opinion.  One of the problems with mammography is finding these cancers in such an early stage that they don't know what to do.  They may never hurt anybody but since they don't know, they have to treat them all as if they were invasive.  If your mom was 50, I would be more aggressive in suggesting mastectomy, but at 80 years old, it seems like a drastic step for something that, quite possibly, has been in her for decades.

No doctor should be telling you to do something as quickly as yours is.  That is suspicious.  I had a much more serious tumor spread widely throughout the breast, and my doctor encouraged me to take my time and never said that anything HAD to be done within a specific time period.   

Good luck to you and your mother. 

There is a Cancer Center in Stockton...St. Joseph's Medical Center.  I went on their website to check it out.  Here's the URL for the Cancer Navigation Services if you are interested

http://www.stjosephscares.org/Medical_Services/ssLINK/195482

From this link:

St. Joseph's Cancer Navigator is available to help those diagnosed with cancer to navigate through the tests, procedures, treatments, and support issues that follow a positive biopsy. We offer support with educational, practical, emotional, or logistical issues surrounding the diagnosis of cancer. We can also make referrals to other agencies that offer resources to assist patients through this difficult time.

The program is FREE and available to help anyone whether newly diagnosed, currently involved in cancer treatment, or experiencing a recurrence.

St. Joseph's Medical Center
1800 North California St
Stockton, CA 95204
Phone: (209) 943-2000

Ditto to everything Coolbreeze said.  

"a form of cancer that wasn't the spreadable kind, but it was such a wide area, the Dr. said that she would have to have her breast removed. " sounds like it's DCIS.  DCIS is pre-invasive, so it can't spread outside the breast.  DCIS cancer cells are confined to the milk ducts, so as the cancer expands, it tends to spread out in the ductal system of the breast. That's why DCIS, although it "can't spread" beyond the breast, often does spread out broadly within the breast.  I had over 7cm of DCIS and I had to have a mastectomy because of that. 

Because it can't move beyond the breast, pure DCIS is 100% survivable.  However over time, DCIS can evolve to become invasive cancer, and at that point, the cancer is no longer considered to be DCIS, now it's invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC).  IDC can move into other parts of the body. In my case, my DCIS has already started to evolve to become IDC - I had 1mm of IDC in with all that DCIS.  From a biopsy and mammogram films alone no one can know if your mother's DCIS really is pure DCIS, or if there might already be some IDC hidden in the middle of all that DCIS.  The cancer needs to be evaluated under a microscope to find that out.  But as Coolbreeze said, there are indicators to suggest whether your mother's DCIS (I am assuming it's DCIS from what you've said) is aggressive or not. So you need to get more information about the pathology of the biopsy to get an idea as to how serious this is, and whether a mastectomy truly is necessary, given your mother's age. That's the first step towards figuring out what to do next.