Diagnosis of LCIS 2 years ago.

In May of 2010 I received a letter in the mail from my health care provider. I expected it to be a letter congratulating me on my recent mammogram. They asked me to return to have another mammogram, which I did in June. They found clustering calcifications. The head of the department went over the results with me and told me that it was probably nothing and that I should make an appoint to come back and have another mammogram in 4 months, unless I was not a gamgling person. I am not. A stereotatic core biopsy was scheduled. Again, the attending nurse told me that if the head of the department said that it was probably nothing then I shouldn't be concerned. The diagnosis was minute sclerotic fibroadenoma with large stromal dystrophic calcifications and concurrent intra and extralesional LCIS, atypical lobular hyperplasia with minute calcifications and one focus of LCIS exhibited nucleation of cells suggesting pleomorphic nuclear features, which was dropped after an intradepartmental review. Next on the list was a surgical biopsy with, hopefully, clear margins followed by Tomoxifen. THE MARGINS WERE CLEAR. The final pathologic diagnosis being atypical ductal hyperplasia, not present at margins, LCIS, atypical lobular hyperplasia, fibroadenoma, and minute calcifications present. I had done my extensive reasearch online and I concluded that, for me, I wanted a bilateral mastectomy. I did not want to take the risk of being told, a few months later or a few years later, that I had invasive breat cancer. The breast surgeon tried to talk me out of it. I would not budge. He requested that I see an oncologist. I told the oncologist that I did not tolerate medication well, that many medications in the past have caused me to breakout in hives and that i did not want to have a mammogram every six months. He told the breast surgeon that my concerns were reasonable. I had the BMX on August 19th 2010. When I returned to the surgeon's office for the final pathology report, after the BMX, he told me that it was a good thing that the breast, my left, was removed because they found LCIS, stage 0, throughout with pagetoid extension into the nipple area and proliferative fibrocystic change without atypia. My right breast had fibrocystic change without atypic and adenosis and was negative for malignancy. I had read that if one breast has LCIS that eventually it will appear in the other breast. That is one of the reasons why I chose to have a BMX. I was 58 at the time and I figured that the older I got the harder the surgery would be for me because of my sensitivities to anestheia. Also, the comapny that my husband worked for was struggling and could close its doors at anytime and that would mean the loss of our excellent health coverage. The surgery was skin sparing with tissue expanders. I had fills during the following months and exchange surgery, with silicone implants, in February of 2011. In November of 2012 the company that my husband worked for closed its doors. He lost his job, along with our health benefits, after almost 30 years. He found fulltime work in January of 2014 making 50% less than before, with health benefits that are nowhere near what we had before his job loss. My surgery had cost us nothing. If I were to have the surgery now we would have to meet the yearly deductible and pay 40% of the total bill.

This is a very personal decision, that only you can make. There are others on this forum who hae chosen to follow a different choice of treatment and they are doing quite well. I wish you the best in whatever decision you make.