Stunned Rookie

Daisy, sorry you found yourself here. You will find this forum a great place for support. I think an experienced Radiologist can have a pretty good idea about a result through imaging, but the only sure way to know is with the biopsy. Hang in there, stay off of Google and stay busy while you wait. I'm sure others will offer other helpful ideas. Best wishes!

Hi Daisy,

Try to remain positive -- it's true you can't be officially diagnosed without a biopsy, though a trained professional can offer an educated opinion. We, too, are sorry you find yourself here, but as you can already see, we are a wonderful, supportive group. We're all here for you, no matter the results.

Please keep us posted!

--The Mods

Hi Daisy777,

I am in Ottawa, ON. This just happened to me. I had a follow up ultrasound from my regular mammogram, and the radiologist came right out and said it was cancer. They can tell a lot from how the image looks.

Luckily here in Ottawa they have a great Women's Breast Health centre and so they immediately put me in a rapid assessment program. I had a biopsy the next day and an MRI the day after that. Tomorrow I see the surgeon and get the results from the biopsy. I saw my family doctor yesterday who read me the ultrasound report, there is another smaller mass adjacent to the tumour so I think there's no doubt it is cancer.

I have been around the block with this stuff several times before as I am at risk for a type of blood cancer. I can tell you for sure that the waiting for the results of a biopsy is truly the most difficult thing in the world. I have had a total of seven biopsies over the last sixteen years. I am still in shock over the breast cancer as I always thought I would for sure get the bone marrow cancer. Stage 1 breast cancer (I am hoping that is my diagnosis) is a far better diagnosis than the other......very treatable and often curable (don't know the stats on that) but the outlook is good. It does takea while to adjust to the "cancer" diagnosis.

Try to keep busy and good luck with getting your results!

There's a reason why, in the BIRADS tumor-image classification system, it doesn't stop at 4 (0 means needs more imaging, 1 means no anomaly, 2 means definitely benign, 3 means probably benign, and 4 means suspicious for malignancy--4A slight suspicion, 4B moderate suspicion, and 4C highly suspicious and probably malignant but still possibly benign). A BIRADS 5 means definitely malignant, but biopsy is necessary to analyze the histology and receptor status, i.e, determine the exact kind of breast cancer. BIRADS 6 means already confirmed malignant by biopsy. When your radiologist says it's cancer after just looking at the imaging, that's BIRADS 5. If it were always medically impossible to identify cancer without a biopsy, the BIRADS system would stop at 4C.

Daisy777 - oh so very sorry about this...so hard and trying. And you are in the worst part until

you know what is going on and have a plan.  Sending hope and encouragement!

hi Daisy,

Very hard to hear. Friday I met with the surgeon and they confirmed mine. We were there for two hours and I came out with a treatment plan and piles of reference materials, including a coil-ring book of about 175 pages! I will have lumpectomy in about a month. If you have to wait a bit for surgery, they say these are slow growing. If I were you I would prefer to be in a larger centre, preferably a teaching hospital. The "grade" is not the same as stage, it means the types of cancer cells. Grade 1 is "organized" moving to Grade 3, which is disorganized (worse than Grade 1) I have grade 3 but they didn't seem overly concerned with that.

I really feel for you having an eight year old daughter. I feel lucky that my kids are grown, they are taking it pretty well (I was actually more worried about my parents as they are in their 80s)

I hope you get more information soon, the more information you get the better you will feel.

Daisy,

If you are anxious and want more info, you can get your full pathology results either through a patient portal or through the medical records department where your biopsy pathology was done. Or through your MD, but I found it easier to just get the results myself.

I also bought some books on breast cancer. I recommend the one put out by Mayo Clinic that is available on Amazon.

You will get info on type of cancer (for instance, ductal or lobular), stage (1 without nodes since it is small), grade (you were told 2), estrogen and progesterone sensitivity of your tumor (if positive this means treatment with anti-hormone medication will help), HER2 status (this can take a couple of weeks; mine was positive after biopsy but negative after surgery, so I had it retested and it was negative), and possibly ki67% (which is a measure of proliferation).

If Her2- you will have an Oncotype Dx test done, usually after surgery. This is a major determinant of treatment. If low, then chemo will do more harm than good and recurrence risk is lower. I had a grade 3 tumor but my Oncotype was very low. There is some uncertainty about chemo for intermediate Oncotype scores. Also, the Oncotype uses 5 measures of proliferation so the ki67% is not the only one.

The other issue is lymph node involvement, which you find out about after surgery (good prospects for you). And lymphovascular invasion, which can be present with clean nodes and just means some cancer cells have gotten into the lymph or blood vessels. This can be focal and probably not a problem, or extensive. You didn't hear anything about "LVI" so you are probably fine.

I don't mean to overwhelm you, just want to give you an overview to the best of my ability from experience. For me, it was good to know the lay of the land, so to speak. Every cancer is treated individually. Many many people do just fine.

You will meet with the surgeon and decide on surgery. And you will meet with an oncologist and radiation person to decide on treatments after (sometimes before) surgery. Your main MD will be the medical oncologist. I personally think surgery is fine in a number of places but I was very picky about the oncologist.

Don't read too much. Watch movies and stay busy. A little Ativan or Xanax is not a bad idea at this stage. Just having it and not taking it helped me!

hi Daisy,

Glad you told your daughter and it sounds like you did it just the right way and she is dealing with it well. We are waiting, any day now, for our daughter to have her first baby so I think she is pretty preoccupied with that! In the space of a couple years, we now all of a sudden have four grandchildren. Our son married a girl with two boys ages 8 & 9, and they had a baby girl this past December. I'm glad my lumpectomy isn't for a month so I can go to Montréal and help out my daughter. Still waiting to hear the surgery date. Trying not to worry about the fact that they said it was grade 3. They didn't make too big a deal about it but from what I've read it doesn't sound good

Also in really awful news just found out my aunt, who I am very close to, has also been diagnosed with breast cancer! I am very worried about her, she is 81 and her son just died of pancreatic cancer in March. It sounds like hers was found early too. Also my room mate from university was just diagnosed! It's like an epidemic or something!

Sending you good wishes while you deal with your diagnosis and wait to hear more information.