Well, it's official...oh, and HER2 equivocal?

I got my official diagnosis today by way of biopsy results. IDC. Multiple lesions, all positive.

I was pretty sure the diagnosis was coming. My doc told me based on radiologist report received last week, and the immediate biopsy he performed, that it would be very unlikely to come back benign. So i've had some time to sit with it. I was holding out a glimmer of hope though.

I'm sort of upset, more mad really. But mostly just numb, I don't know. I brought my sister and husband with me to the doc for emotional support, as the receptionist suggested I do, and they seem to be taking it harder than me, lol! I don't know if there is supposed to be a 'normal' way to cope with this. I hope I'm not just suppressing everything, bc surely that's not helpful.

I got a call already today to meet with the surgeon tomorrow, and get bone scans and CTs on thursday, so in terms of speed, I could not be happier. (An ultrasound done 3 months ago showed 1 growth that was apparently not suspicious, and now 3 months later, I have 6 malignant masses, so something tells me that either the last tech was not very skilled, or that this cancer is super fast growing). The closer I get to a treatment the plan, the better!

In terms of hormone receptors, i'm ER+, PR+, and HER2 "equivocal" .

Does anyone know what that means? HER2 equivocal? From what I can tell, I need more testing or something becasue the pathologist could not determine. Has anyone else had these results?

Hi Roots, sorry you have joined this club. Hopefully, we can help you understand this and get through it. They will continue to test until it is considered Her2+ or Her2 - . For my diagnosis, they used these 2 tests; the FISH and the IHC.

• IHC test (ImmunoHistoChemistry): The ImmunoHistoChemistry test finds out if there is too much HER2 protein in the cancer cells. The results of the IHC test can be: 0 (negative), 1+ (also negative), 2+ (borderline), or 3+ (positive — HER2 protein overexpression).
• FISH test (Fluorescence In Situ Hybridization): The Fluorescence In Situ Hybridization test finds out if there are too many copies of the HER2 gene in the cancer cells. The results of the FISH test can be positive (HER2 gene amplification) or negative (no HER2 gene amplification).

There are 2 more test they use, but I don't know too much about them .

Both my breasts were equivocal after several tests and retests on the pathology of my right breast tumor came back positive. I had all the pathology redone (both surgical pathology as well as the biopsies) a couple months later, and again it came back positive, so I went with HER+2 treatment for a year.

Concurring with all above. My HER2 was “equivocal” on initial testing so it was sent for FISH and came back positive. FISH is supposed to be *very* accurate and as you know it’s important to know HER2 status to decide on course of treatment.