worried for my mom and which stage is this

Surgical staging for your mom depends on how much cancer was found in the lymph nodes, and how many nodes were affected. When you are referring to metastatic cancer, was it limited to the lymph nodes only?

What was the tumor size in the breast, and what was the tumor size in the lymph node, and was it just the one node so far? Sorry to repeat the question but your answer contains a measurement that is different from your original post - in the OP it is millimeters and in your answer it is centimeters.

That is a pretty unusual presentation - the reverse is the more likely scenario, but going with what you currently know her stage would be IIA (Stage 2) if nothing changes on post-operative pathology, and no distant metastasis is found.

Here is Breastcancer.org's description of Stage IIA:

Stage IIA describes invasive breast cancer in which:

• no tumor can be found in the breast, but cancer (larger than 2 millimeters) is found in 1 to 3 axillary lymph nodes (the lymph nodes under the arm) or in the lymph nodes near the breast bone (found during a sentinel node biopsy) OR
• the tumor measures 2 centimeters or smaller and has spread to the axillary lymph nodes OR
• the tumor is larger than 2 centimeters but not larger than 5 centimeters and has not spread to the axillary lymph nodes

Everyone has a differing number of lymph nodes in the axillary (armpit) area. Most surgeons, when they find a positive sentinel node and remove additional lymph nodes in an ALND surgery, remove levels 1 & 2. This can yield anywhere from less than 10 to more than 30 lymph nodes. Here is a graphic that may be helpful.

Generally axillary clearance surgery, or ALND, means the removal of all lymph nodes in levels 1 & 2 of the axilla. If you were given a number of 30, that most likely means that your mom had 30 lymph nodes removed from that area. A number of nodes would remain in level 3. Unless gross (visible) disease is present in the lymph nodes removed from levels 1 & 2, level 3 is usually left alone, as removal of all the lymph nodes can cause other problems post-surgically, such as lymphedema.

Staging works with a combination of breast tumor size and number of nodes positive. Do you know if they have now checked all of the removed lymph nodes in the lab? If no more are cancerous, I believe your mom would be stage II because there is a smaller breast tumor and one positive node. Stage IIA extends up to 3 positive lymph nodes, more than 4 positive nodes would push her to stage III. Here is a complete description of each stage from this website:

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