New Diagnosis

Hi Teachersbc123,

We're so sorry you have to be here, but very glad you found us. You'll find BCO a very supportive and informative resource.

There's sure to be someone along soon who will give you some great personal advice, but in the meantime, you may find helpful advice for talking with your son on the main Breastcancer.org site's page on Talking to Older Children and Teens.

We hope this helps -- best of luck and let us know how the surgery goes on Monday!

--The Mods

TeachersBC123 - I completely understand how you are feeling. I am also newly diagnosed and had the same situation - how to tell our 13 year old and 17 year old.

We sat them down together and presented it as a positive -- this is the reason it is important to get mammograms to catch things early and deal with it. Both kids accepted it, but later my 17 year old revealed that the "C" word was eating away at him. At that point - I just let him ask me any questions that were on his mind. I think he's doing better with it now, but not completely sure.

Again, I'm new at this too. So if you find out something that works better, would love to hear from you about it.

TeachersBC123,

Even though you have probably had your talk with your son already, it might help to tell him that DCIS is really not like what most people think of when you mention cancer. Although it is classified as stage 0 breast cancer, doctors are debating if they should call it something different, because it is non-invasive. This means that it is not biologically capable of leaving the milk duct, let alone entering your breast and certainly not the rest of your body.

Chemo is never used and the survival rate is almost 100 percent. Because of this you can take your time weighing the benefits and risks of any treatment options your doctor recommends. I waited for 6 months to have surgery.

No matter what happens on Monday, I would strongly recommend you get a 2nd pathology opinion. When I was diagnosed in 2007, I was told I would need a mastectomy until I consulted with Dr. Michael Lagios, a world renowned DCIS expert and pathologist. Pathologists disagree up to 20 percent of the time and he disagreed with my local pathologist.

After my lumpcetomy, he also used the Van Nuys Prognostic Index to calculate my risk of recurrence without radiation. Since my risk without radiation was only 4 percent, I decided not to have it, as the typical 50 percent risk reduction would have been only 2 percent for me. Since you can only have radiation once, I opted to save it for later, in case I ever got invasive breast cancer.

Hope this helps ease your mind a little. If you would like to read more of my story, please go to: http://dciswithoutrads.com/

Also please feel free to send me a private message anytime.

Best,

Sandie

I was diagnosed with DCIS and my tumor was almost 8 cc's. I had a lumpectomy first but had to have a BMX. Even with all of this I did NOT have to have chemo or radiation. So, don't worry until the pathologist report comes back. Maybe you will be lucky like me and no rads will be necessary. I will pray for you.



Suzanne

Yup, just in case.  DCIS cells have this habit of sometimes "skipping" within the milk ducts, so even with clear margins, it's possible that a few rogue cells remain. Those rogue cells can develop into a recurrence if they are not killed off.  How great your risk is that there might be a few remnants left depends on the specifics of your pathology - the size and grade of your DCIS, whether there was a single area vs. more than one, the size of the margins, etc..  For some women - for example someone with a tiny area of grade 1 DCIS and very wide margins - the risk might be quite low and it might be possible to skip rads without increasing the recurrence risk by much.  But for other women - for example, someone with more than one focus of high grade DCIS and clear but narrow margins - the risk will be higher and rads is able to cut the recurrence risk by about 50%. Most women who have a lumpectomy for DCIS do end up having rads.