Any body Italian ??

Ho appena letto la tua post!  Io parlo l'italiano e se sei ancora interessata io ti posso aiutare!

Mena

I live in Sardegna (and have lived here for the past 25 years), although I was born in USA.    I am 54 years old.     Although, even  after all these years I still slaughter the Italian language, I do feel to be (almost) Sardinian/Italian.    Anyway, I am living the experience of having breast cancer in Italy.   I guess you are too?      How's your English?      If you write in Italian, I will understand all, and can write back in messed up Italian, but you might understand my English better!   

My journey is only at the beginning, thus I do not know yet how much our experience will differ from that which we read on this board.       I have been diagnosed as having IDC.     Waited 12 days to get that biopsy result.     Now, it has been a month since I got confirmation of having breast cancer and I am still waiting to learn my surgery date.        Blood tests, abdominal echography, chest x-ray and mammary and bone scintigraphy have been done.      But with the exception of the doc that did the abdominal echography last week, nobody has bothered to actually tell me the results of those exams!!!!!     I did manage to peak at the results myself by spying at the chart they make me carry around!!!    For a while, my bone scintigraphy result was not in my chart, and, since I'd seen that my ALP is elevated (218), I have been preparing myself mentally to get a bad scintigraphy result...     But, from what I managed to peak at last week, it seems OK (some diffuse labelling shows up in lumbar spine, but I guess that is probably just arthrosis).    This Friday is my interview with anesthesiologist--- Hopefully then they will make appointment for me to actually talk with a doctor about my exam results and will tell me a date for my surgery!!!!        I do know that I am supposed to get a quadrantectomy plus radiation.     

I have read that the oncotype testing, that is talked about so much on this board, is not routinely done here in Italy, because health system doesn't cover it.     But apparently it is technically possible to pay to have it done privately??     I want to talk to my surgeon about that, to make sure that in the event that other findings show that it would be useful to have the oncotyping done, that a piece of the tumor will in fact be saved for that purpose, conserved in the proper manner!!    

I wish you all the best in dealing with your cancer.