How long can I wait before surgery?

no you should get surgery as soon as you can or get another opinion from another surgeon. This is your life it's too long to wait till next year

I agree with dogsandjogs, talk with your surgeons office and see if there is something you can work out financially or if there's a program that can help with your expenses. I would not wait another year. Let me explain why. DCIS, the diagnosis that you have now, is cancer that is still contained within the ducts. It's very early stage and has not broken out of the ducts yet to be able to spread to other parts of your body. If left to grow, which is what cancer does if left alone, it will break out of the ducts and become invasive, which means it could spread to other parts of your body. You do not want to take that chance by waiting a year. Your life is more important than money. I don't mean to scare you, but you should know the facts before making such an important decision. Please talk with your surgeon, there are a lot of people out there in your situation with high deductibles, or even with no insurance so even though we're not aware of it they do have alternate ways of accomidating everyone. I personally experienced this when I had to take my great nephew to the Dr recently. Actually the same family Dr my husband went to the week before and the insurance paid $128 for the same office visit that I paid $50 in cash for my great nephew who had no insurance. His mom told me that's what the office visit would cost when you had no insurance, she was right.  That was our family practice and we had no idea that option was available. Please talk with your surgeon.

DCIS and invasive cancer are not the same.  With DCIS, you have more time.  So it's important to not compare your situation, and timelines to surgery, to that someone who's had invasive cancer.

If someone is diagnosed with just a small amount of low grade DCIS, waiting a year might actually be fine.  Personally I wouldn't do it, but there is controversy as to whether a small unaggressive DCIS even needs to be removed.  With extensive DCIS, however, the risks are higher.  And if the DCIS is high grade, then the risks are higher again.  The more DCIS you have, and the more aggressive the DCIS, the greater the risk that there might be some invasive cancer already hidden in with the DCIS.  If you've had a surgical biopsy and nothing more than DCIS was found, then this risk is significantly lessened.  But if you've only had a needle biopsy, then the extensiveness of your DCIS, and possibly the grade, presents a substantial risk.  

The other risk is that even if today what is in your breast is all DCIS, the greater the amount of DCIS that you have, and the more aggressive the DCIS, the greater the chance that this DCIS might evolve to become invasive cancer within a relatively short period of time - maybe 6 months, maybe a year, maybe 2 years.  Here again, if you've had an excisional biopsy and most of the DCIS has already been removed, this risk is lessened.

So the questions are:

Have you had just a stereotactic biopsy or have you had an excisional (surgical) biopsy? 

What is the grade of the DCIS? Is there any comedonecrosis present?

eas - I understand now.  I read it as you had to pay deductibles for 2014 and 2015. before coverage.  The 'written word' does not always come across as we mean it to -unfortunately.

As long as you have known DCIS in your breast you cannot be sure that you do not already have IDC.  The probabilities are favorable but somebody gets the short end of the statistics.