Trying to understand breast cancer

There is no one path but size of tumor does not correspond to lymph node involvement.

Your biopsy is the first step (after seeing something in a mammogram or feeling something). Try not to stress until you have a biopsy report. Ask for the report as, if the mass is cancerous, the details will tell you a great deal. Hormone / HER2 receptor status is the big thing to know.

If cancer, my process went this way:

biopsy - > cancer; breast surgeon consult -> breast MRI; two more biopsies; breast surgeon consult, plastic surgeon consult, radiation oncologist consult. Weeks of talking, reading and decision making. Plan of action put in place. Sentinel node biopsy -> cancer evidence. Then medical oncologist consult. This took ~2.5 months total. My treatment course was mastectomy, CT scans for signs of cancer elsewhere, chemo, radiation, aromatase inhibitors, reconstruction. Not all women follow this path or timeline.

Post treatment, I have had a baseline dexa scan (bone density due to the aromatase inhibitor) and a second set of CT scans (surgery prep for one, peace of mind for another); don't expect to do more. I have an annual mammogram on my natural breast.

Tigerlily, I never thought that much about bc either till I had a mammogram in my 50's and it picked up an architectural distortion in my left breast, it was not palpable. (I'm embarrassed that I never had a mammo till my 50's, but from what I'm reading I am far from being the only woman who hadn't gotten one till a later age). I only went because I felt a cyst in my right breast (turned out to be benign looking, they haven't biopsied it). They're going to do ultrasounds and MRI's annually in the future. It seems that after I went through menopause I ended up with fibrocystic changes in my breasts and I can feels cysts in them when I do my self exams.

I then asked one of my girlfriends if she had ever been called back after a mammogram, she is in her 50's also and she told me she hadn't had one in 20 years because breast cancer doesn't run in her family. (she had a baseline mammo at age 35). I told her maybe she should have one. But then I thought who am I to dispense medical advice? I've done a lot of reading since and mammograms miss plenty of cancers in women who have dense breast tissue. I knew of a woman who had annual mammograms then she found a lump in her breast in between mammograms which turned out to be an aggressive cancer. The mammograms never picked it up, I don't know why. She was someone who worked with my mother.

Now I have to have them in the future every 6 months because of my dx of a radial scar which they removed 5 weeks ago. It was benign thank God but there were atypical cells found in it. So who knows what is coming down the road.

I hope yours is also benign. And it's really good that the radiologist thinks that it is benign, when they found my architectural distortion they did a sonogram right afterward and they were acting like they thought it was going to be malignant although they never said that I could tell they were extremely concerned. And my gynecologist also called my house as I was walking in the door and she kept saying, "I don't want to sugarcoat this, you have to have a biopsy right away." So I think that the radiologist must have told her on the phone that it looked very suspicious for cancer.

I had an ultrasound guided core needle biopsy the next week and the radiologist that did it called me 2 days later and told me it was a radial scar and he didn't see any malignant cells. He knew what it was immediately. I was then referred to a breast surgeon and they removed the whole radial scar. They took out some tissue about the size of a grape according to the breast surgeon who removed it. then they biopsied the entire thing (the tissue that was removed). I got a call 2 days later that there was no "upgrade to dcis" which was what they were concerned about. But I have to be watched very carefully in the future. I am now considered at higher risk due to the radial scar and atypia.

There is really little to be gained from playing mind games with a disease you haven't even been diagnosed with. I get that you're trying to feel prepared, just in case. As has been pointed out, breast cancer is not just one disease. It is many diseases with many treatment options.

You don't need to scare yourself needlessly. We have saying here: "Its not cancer until pathology proves it." Don't borrow trouble. There will be plenty of time for investigation, should this indeed be cancer.