Calling All with Tumors 6 cm +

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  • Ossa
    Ossa Member Posts: 919
    edited September 2013

    tellie.. that is a great story, thanks for sharing.. I am also doing good no sign of anything but do worry everytime i get a pain or a headache lasting more than a day....

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  • Butchandbuddy
    Butchandbuddy Member Posts: 4
    edited November 2013


    Hi ladies ! I am also a big tumor lady! I was diagnosed in may of this year with a 11 centimeter tumor!!!!! It could not be felt I had a mammogram did not show it they did a ultra sound because I always had cysts and found what they thought was a 3 centimeter tumor until I had a left mastectomy and found out it was 11 centimeters. When they told me I could not believe it I was in total denial. I thought I wasn't going to be around very much longer.i am almost done with chemo taxol then I have to have radiation . I am still scared what the future will bring but reading what all you girls are going through or been through gives me alot of hope.

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  • fstop
    fstop Member Posts: 14
    edited November 2013


    Hi ladies,


    I had a large tumor also but I was DCIS. It was 14.8 x 8.2 x 5.1 cm. Doctors never believe me when I tell them.



    I have not dug through all the post yet but is there anyone else that was DCIS large tumor? Did you do other treatments? I did a pre surgery study on a chemo pill to shrink the tumor but nothing else.


    Hugs to all.

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  • lago
    lago Member Posts: 17,186
    edited November 2013


    Butchandbuddy My tumor was only 6.5cm (only 5.5cm) but that was pretty huge for me given the size of my breast. My surgeon pretty much told me I would most likely be a stage IIIa. Surprise, even with the HER2+ factor I had no nodes.


    My neighbor diagnosed not long after me had smaller tumors and many nodes (also triple positive). I think she is at least a IIIa. She is 3 years NED and doing great. You will be on some kind of Hormone therapy to battle that ER+. You'll be on that for at least 5 years. You have a good chance of beating this.


    fstop Do a search for Beesie. She really has done a ton of research on DCIS. She might be able to point you in the right direction.

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  • Butchandbuddy
    Butchandbuddy Member Posts: 4
    edited November 2013


    Lago: I will be on tamoxifen for five years. I have been reading other threads It has no rhyme or reason on who gets reacurance. I have put on weight because of the steroids they give for taxol and I also founds out my thyroid is messed up so I am on meds for that so I hope my weight starts going back down. Looks like you are three years out congrats I hope I can do that. They tell me er + is a good thing but sometimes I wonder.

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  • lago
    lago Member Posts: 17,186
    edited November 2013


    Butchandbuddy Yes I am just over 3 years out. No reason not to think you won't get there. My theory… take care of yourself, exercise keep that weight down and take that pill. Don't worry about things you have no control over that may never happen to you. BTW most of us gained weight on chemo with steroids. I put on at times 10+lbs which is a lot for me. I had another friend put on 25. Right now just eat what you can and try to keep it healthy.



    As far as the hormone positive thing. Yeah with breast cancer the glass is always half full and half empty. Triple negative is the most aggressive and most likely to recur in the first 2 years… but if you make it past the first 3 there's a really good chance you are cured. With us hormone positive we need to wait 25 years before they will say that. Still, I'm not worrying till someone tells me there's an issue.


    I could give you my seat belt speech but I like this true story that happened to me 2 weeks ago:


    I was in a cab and found out my driver was from Pakistan. We started discussing our favorite Pakistani restaurant (we liked the same one). I mentioned to him that it wasn't the healthiest food. He said to me "Well you got to live. You know when you go to heaven and god sees you didn't live he sends you back. God says: 'You have to live before I let you into heaven.'"


    Granted everything in moderation. ;)


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  • GraceB1
    GraceB1 Member Posts: 213
    edited November 2013


    I thought that I'd introduce myself. I found a 6x5cm in June. I'd been doing self exams but was looking for a small knot not a shallow thickening across a wide area. I knew when I found it that it was cancer even thought it took the doctors a month to catch up with me. They missed it with a needle biopsy and had to do surgery before we got proof. I could feel it growing by the day. Testing showed 3 nodes involved on pet scan but the all the other tests came back clear :-)


    I'm in the middle of neoadjuvant chemo right now. We wanted to kill any stray cancer cells right away and not wait until after surgery. Had a lot of nausea and fatigue with the A/C but the tumor started shrinking right away. By the end of the fourth treatment I could just feel a few crinkles left behind. Now I'm really struggling with the taxotere. Ended up in the hospital for 8 days with dehydration and neutropenic fever after the first dose. I also have hand and foot syndrome and my hands and feet were painful and then went numb. Now they're peeling. I'm 10 days out from the second (smaller) dose and managed to stay at home this time but I sure feel lousy. I've lost 25 pounds so far and feel so weak. I keep trying to tell myself just to put one foot in front of the other and get through this but I'm so tired of feeling bad and not being able to do much but take pills and sleep. Can you tell that I'm having a bad day?


    On the brighter side (?) we scheduled the smx and te for Jan. My wonderful BS said that sometimes the tumor collapses in a ball and sometimes it flattens out like a sheet of paper. She thinks that this is what mine did and even though it's so much smaller she'd be removing a lot of tissue to be sure of clean margins. Then it will be on to radiation but reconstruction will have to wait a year according the PS. Time to get off of here and over to the hospital to get my blood work checked. First time I'll be out of the house since the last treatment. Wish me luck because I'm a really bad stick.

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  • lago
    lago Member Posts: 17,186
    edited November 2013


    GraceB1 Sorry you're having a rough time but it sounds like you are in good hands. Taxotere does suck but we get through it. I had Nuelasta shots from the start so I didn't get the low white counts. It eventually gets better. As far as waiting a year after radiation for reconstruction… the longer you wait the better your results will be. You really want to give that tissue time to repair. Your doctors sound great. Hang in there.

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  • J-Bug
    J-Bug Member Posts: 626
    edited December 2013

    Elizabeth, I wanted to find out if you ended up having your DIEP flap? For me it was the hardest step of the process. I am hesitant to offer a lot of advice in this area because my incisions on the under sides of the breasts came back open a couple of weeks after the surgery and they had to take me back in and put me back together. My incisions were gaping open and oozing for a couple of weeks before they got me back in. I kept diapers over them, getting help changing them often. It was traumatic. They couldn't fix it all completely so now one side is significantly larger than the other. The surgeon has a phenomenal reputation but he said that this just happens sometimes. 

    I hope you ladies are doing well. I just got a fitbit for Christmas and was wondering if anyone else uses one? I am hoping to step up the activity while I am on a semester break from grad school - I only have to go to work every day right now. It feels like a vacation!

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  • shells43
    shells43 Member Posts: 1,022
    edited January 2014

    Happy New Year Big Sisters!

    image

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  • wintersocks
    wintersocks Member Posts: 922
    edited January 2014

    image

    And from GB

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  • J-Bug
    J-Bug Member Posts: 626
    edited January 2014

    Happy New Year ladies!

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  • ziggypop
    ziggypop Member Posts: 1,071
    edited January 2014

    New to this thread - had a 9cm tumor - pretty much the whole breast. y onc told me that they used to think that 'size mattered' , and now they "don't think size matters so much" - made me chuckle. Happy New Year!

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  • wintersocks
    wintersocks Member Posts: 922
    edited January 2014

    Ziggypop,

    I heard that too. But, I am having a hard time believing it. 

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  • Minnie72
    Minnie72 Member Posts: 61
    edited January 2014

    Mine was between 5.5-7cm with othet smaller ones around it. I never felt the big one which was up close to my clavicle.  I felt the smaller ones but took me couple of months to get them checked because I do get lumpy breasts before my period.  I just turned 39 so never had mammo before.  

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  • J-Bug
    J-Bug Member Posts: 626
    edited January 2014

    Welcome Ziggypop! I was told that size played a role in importance, but not the largest role, which made sense to me because it is evaluated in staging. I think, more importantly, it can play a role in our emotional perception of our illness. 

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  • ziggypop
    ziggypop Member Posts: 1,071
    edited January 2014

    Hey June-bug, I think that that's really what my onc was saying. Before they knew about the many different things that play a role in staging and prognosis (i.e. grade, etc), size really was considered the important factor - now it is one among many factors. 

    I was really glad to see this thread, because when my PCP first felt my lump, she said, "Oh my God, that's huge - that's the biggest one I ever felt."  And, I'll tell ya - that did not make me feel too dang good. I am glad to know that my lump was not the largest ever. 

    Wintersocks -  Yes, but l try to figure it this way - because my lump was huge, I could feel it & I could feel it shrinking as I had chemo (I had a really had experience with chemo) - knowing how big it was helps me whenever I feel like griping about side effects of treatments - it's like I KNOW the cancer was there because I could feel it. If it were smaller I think I'd be more inclined to think (for instance) about quitting Tamoxifen. Because of the size - I'm more willing to want the most aggressive treatment. 

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  • shells43
    shells43 Member Posts: 1,022
    edited January 2014

    Hey Ziggypop,

    I had a similar experience with my breast specialist, as he was giving me the first ultrasound (after referral for failing my mammo). He was talking to the technician taking the measurements on the computer screen thing while he was passing the wand over me. She says " where do you want me to start?" and he says, "just don't go off the screen". Shit, I thought. I don't know what they measured then, but my biopsy report said the mass was 9.7 x 9.2 cm.

    I'm here to say though that all is well, so having a "gentle giant" as I have heard them called might not be all bad. Hang in there!


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  • nanapat6225
    nanapat6225 Member Posts: 17
    edited January 2014

    Hi mine is not as large as yours 6.4cm solid mass under the left nipple.I had two mammos and a ultersound,first one 8 weeks ago.I seen my surgeon yesterday 1-20-2014 and he set a biopsy for both breast 2-03-2014.Thats if I get a referal from my PCD.  It seems it taking a long time to do so.Meanwhile it's wait and worry. I am 56 post menaposal

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  • J-Bug
    J-Bug Member Posts: 626
    edited February 2014

    nanapat6225: It does take a little time to get the whole process going as they diagnose every aspect of the disease. I hope that you are doing okay in spite of it all.

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  • Scaredbunny
    Scaredbunny Member Posts: 18
    edited November 2017

    Hi Belle76. Just reading your BC blog which is a fairly similar diagnosis to mine. I had a BMX with 7 lymph nodes affected and tumor was 5.6cm. I had surgery first then I dI'd 4 AC 2 Taxol and 2 more to go. Then on to radiation. My BC is IMPC. You are 6 years out at this stage. That sounds amazing to me. My oncologist has said that I am at high risk of reoccurrence. ..was this said to you by your team at the time ?

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  • Kkmay
    Kkmay Member Posts: 156
    edited February 2019

    Thank you ladies for sharing your experiences!

    It gave me hope that my mom will get cured from stage III breast cancer. My mom’s tumor is HUGE 7cm x 7cm x 5.5 cm ER-/PR- HER+. She has just started chemotherpy. Hopefully, she’ll get fully cured and I get to share her story here

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  • CaliKelly
    CaliKelly Member Posts: 474
    edited February 2019

    My primary tumor was over 8 cm., but I just met a lady who had a 14 cm.tumor! She's 9 years cancer free and going strong! I'm currently 3 yrs free from cancer and doing great! Best wishes to you and Mom for great outcome💗

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