Enjoying your 30s...and breast cancer!

Hi Jsut9802. I'm 39, and was diagnosed on February 17th. Waiting on results from genetic testing to determine my treatment plan, but I have an appointment with my MO on the 14th. I really just want to start whatever they decide is best - I feel like I'm wasting too much time waiting.

Hi LiveNLove, and welcome to Breastcancer.org!

We're so sorry you have to be here, but really glad you found us! You've come to the best place for support and this forum is wonderful for meeting others diagnosed at a young age.

Please keep us posted with how you're doing, and happy posting!

--The Mods

Hi Ladies! Happy to see this thread. I am just over a year into my stage 3 diagnosis at age 34, still in active treatment, and going strong! It seems most of you are new on this Journey. I wish you the best and please feel free to bounce any questions my way. I have had chemo, surgery, targeted therapy, radiation, and am now having more chemo....I am pretty well versed in all of it. I also work full time and have a 2 year old. You can do this!! Hugs.

I was diagnosed last June at 35 and am now on hormone therapy. I have a five-year-old daughter. Last year was brutal, but this year is looking bright. I'm doing well, but feeling more emotional as I get closer to the anniversary of my diagnosis.

I have an appointment with my MO tomorrow to get the results of the genetic test and determine my treatment plan. I'm feeling very anxious today. All of the waiting has made this feel kind of surreal.

Hi Everyone - I have not been through here in awhile, but I am coming up on my one-year mark since diagnosis (3/24) and I cannot help but return to this place that provided me such comfort during the time leading up to that day.

I was diagnosed just three weeks after my 33rd birthday with stage 2 triple negative breast cancer. I had no significant family history and my BRCA gene test was negative. I am married, but we had no children, so I underwent "fertility preservation" -- I had my eggs harvested and we made embryos which are now stored.

If anyone is interested in doing fertility preservation, consider going to the Livestrong website. They give out grants, and quickly, to people who meet the income requirements (which are not terribly low, either). We received a grant and it knocked down the price tag for all of this from a little more than $10k to about $4k.

I live in NJ, but went to NYU for a second opinion and once they told me they recommended the exact same treatment proposed by my oncologist in NJ (dose-dense chemo, AC-T, then most likely lumpectomy and radiation), I felt confident staying local.

I am extremely lucky to say that my treatment went as smoothly as possible and I got a near pathologically complete response from the chemo, completely clear nodes, and good margins. Knock on wood, I had no long-term effects from the radiation, other than slight "tanning" on the area.

For those of you just starting out, my heart breaks for you. This is such a crappy turn of events. But, YOU CAN DO THIS. You will be surprised at what you can do. Take things day by day and one thing at a time. Try not to let your mind go to the dark places of fear too often -- it is normal and part of the experience and you have to deal with those feelings, but try not to let them dominate. It might sound ridiculous, but when those thoughts try and pull me in and I truly don't feel like I am "processing" anything - just wasting time - I literally say to myself, "Just don't think about it."

You are in the midst of a trauma, and you can't expect to understand how it is changing you as it happens. Just do your best every day, and as you move through this experience you will have to be patient with yourself.

Sending you all the best. If anyone ever needs any questions answered about fertility, chemo, lumpectomy/sentinel node dissection, or radiation therapy, please feel free to contact me. It would be an honor to help someone who is in the position I was in a year ago.

Just want to say hi to everyone! I was dx last Nov. at 29 and I just turned 30 this month. I am almost done with neoadjuvant chemo and will have surgery sometimes in April. I wish everyone here a speedy recovery! Let's stay strong!!

I am having a lumpectomy and sentinel node biopsy on Monday. I don't know if it was the right decision but ultimately I wish I didn't need surgery at all and so to me, the most minimal surgery seems like the best option. Will radiation cause problems and make me regret that decision? Will I have a recurrence that will make me regret that decision? Will i end up with uneven breasts that look bad? I really don't know but I can think of just as many reasons I might be unhappy about the mastectomy (maybe more). And I can always do more surgery in the future but I can't ever undo a surgery.

The most helpful thing my surgeon told me to help make the decision was a series of stories of former patients who were both happy and unhappy with both decisions and how their various personalities played into how they felt about it. Some people need the peace of mind of the mastectomy because they lose sleep over worrying about recurrence. Some get really upset by having a breast they can't feel after mastectomy and implants. Some get a lumpectomy and have a recurrence 10 years later and are happy they had 10 more years with their breast. Others might have a completely opposite reaction to the same thing. So I think knowing your self and trying to guess how you will feel about possible outcomes is probably the best way to decide.

Hi Prue_pueng, and welcome to BCO. The posting activity here is quite a bit slower during the Western Hemisphere's nighttimes and weekends. There will be more members active on here next week.

I am so sorry about your diagnosis and your loss of family members to cancer, and that now you have these concerns for yourself. We all understand your worry about recurrence. I think that fear is one way having cancer changes us all forever. It is all very scary.

Understand, mastectomy only reduces local recurrence probability -- it does not eliminate that possibility. While you continue with your Chemo treatments, you can take your time to consider whether you would want further surgery. The right decision will be the one you will make yourself.

See Beesie's post linked here__

https://community.breastcancer.org/forum/96/topics/816245?page=1#post_3835034

Prue_pueng, if your tumor size/measurement range (2 to 2.9 cm.) is shown correctly on your profile page, somehow your stage is being shown incorrectly. I think yours would be Stage IIA, same as mine. (?)

http://www.breastcancer.org/symptoms/diagnosis/staging#stage2

Hi everyone,

I am 34, recently diagnosed in March. My surgery will be end of April. Opting to go for lumpectomy and radiation therapy. My Oncologist will be testing lymph nodes and also the removed tissues with additional margins to determine if I would need chemo or even further surgery. I am pending on the genetics test results, although I am somewhat certain that I am not ready for a mastectomy yet regardless.

I do feel like there is still so much information I need to know. Also partly why I feel a lumpectomy for me now would be less drastic.

Hi All,

I'm 34 and was diagnosed 4 weeks ago. I should be getting my BRCA test this week and if negative I will go through with a Lumpectomy and Radiation. I already have my team that'll I'll be using for my BC, Surgeon, RO, and MO. I too struggle with if I'm making the right decision. But after reading books and about other women on this awesome board I see that neither is 100% so unless I have the mutated BRCA gene I will keep my breast and just have a Lumpectomy.

hi everyone, I was diagnosed last June at 36. I finished chemo almost 2 months ago. Keep your heads up ladies. It's a tough road but you will get through this. I too had to go through this without my mother and that was the hardest part. I'm just hoping for a better year.

My grandma had bc - she is past ten years since diagnosis.

My other grandmother died of a different cancer. My dad died of a different cancer at 35. My younger sister has a terminal cancer of another kind.

Genetics say probably none of them are related.

my mom had BC. She passed last year at age of 54. But I'm BRCA negative and my mom was the first to get it.

No one in my immediate family had bc, but when I was looking into my family tree for the Brca test I found out that 4 women on my father's side (extended family) had bc, all under 40. We are talking 20/30 years ago, but it's definitely there.

I tested inconclusive, but my geneticist did say it is probable that I have some sort of mutation that hasn't been discovered by scientists yet. They only tested for a panel of 20 or so mutations, my onco said there are 100,000 out there which haven't been discovered.

I find it interesting that it's on my father's side because it's difficult to know..it doesn't come out in men very often, so they end up being carriers ofthe gene..I don't have any sisters either, so not surprisingly I wouldn't have known.