Can someone help me understand my results?

Hi ScatteredEnergy,

We're sorry to hear of your diagnosis. We know the information you receive can be overwhelming and confusing. However, there's always members here who can help clear things up for you, and someone will surely be by soon!

You ask about what the "stage" 2 means -- we don't see any reference to stage in your report, Typically staging comes after some more information is received -- so are you referencing the grade 2 that is mentioned in the report? If so, you can read about what grade means for you at the main Breastcancer.org site's Cell Grade page. In addition, for more info about the pieces of your diagnosis, you can reference the Your Diagnosis section.

We hope this helps and we hope you get some more answers soon!

--The Mods

At this point you've just had needle biopsies and don't have complete pathology results. So the information is very incomplete.

What the report says is that in two locations in your breast (2:00 and 9:00) you have invasive ductal carcinoma, IDC, that is grade II. Grade represents how quickly the cancer is growing and how different the cells look versus normal cells. Grade therefore can be considered a measurement of the aggressiveness of the cancer. Grade I is least aggressive and Grade III is most aggressive. You fall in the middle with a Grade II.

This explains Nottingham grading:

The sizes noted for the two areas of IDC aren't important because it just represents the size of the sample taken by the needle.

The report also notes that it appears from the FNA (item C) that you have cancer in one lymph node.

What is still to come from the biopsy is the hormone status - ER, PR and HER2. Your post-surgical treatment will be determined in part based on whether these are positive or negative.

You won't know the size of the areas of cancer until after surgery. And you won't know the Stage of your diagnosis until after surgery. Stage is determined based on: 1) the size of the tumor; 2) the nodal status, i.e. node negative or node positive and the number of positive nodes; 3) whether there is distant metastasis; and if "No" to mets, then 4) the grade of the tumor; and 5) the hormone status of tumor. Grade and hormone status are new additions to Staging that were just implemented late last year.

Although a lot is not yet known, with two areas of cancer that appear to be fairly far from each other, your surgeon may recommend a mastectomy rather than a lumpectomy. I'm speculating on that, but it's something you should be prepared for or ask about.

Note: Edited for typo only (nodal status, not nodal stats

Beesie-Awesome help! TY!

ScatteredEnergy-I am sorry you have to go through this. I am newly diagnosed also and waiting on the BRCA test. Could be 2 more weeks. Hang in there and use this forum as a lifeline! 💖