Need help with this crushing fear of Triple Negative

Nikko, first it will be helpful if you choose one thread for the time being so those of us who are responding can avoid being too repetitive. After you have more information you may want to join existing threads that are diagnosis or treatment specific.

You are currently in the time of greatest uncertainty. My advice is to avoid Dr. Google, try to put this aside and wait until Monday as you have asked your doctors to do, do some things you enjoy over the next few days until you have more information on which to base a plan, and enjoy that glass of wine!

Triple negative sucks and is scary, but the vast majority of us don't die from it. Also, I was diagnosed with tnbc, met with my surgeon and MO, and then went out of town for 3 weeks. It is very rare to have an emergency need for treatment. Please take a deep breath and focus on what you are doing RIGHT NOW. And then the next thing. and then the next thing. Enjoy your day tomorrow. Focus on who you are with, even if you are by yourself. Focus on enjoying your meal, whatever it is.

You can't change the outcome by worrying about it. Decide not to worry right now. I KNOW you can do it.

You are definitely in the worst phase right now, with incomplete information. Once you have more information, your mind can focus on just a few things instead of trying to contemplate and brace yourself for everything at once. Hang in there. It does get better and you will not feel like this forever.

I also self-diagnosed with triple-negative based on Google Images and trying to use my memory of the ultrasound biopsy images to compare to various pictures. My pathology ended up coming back triple-positive instead, so I literally could not have been more wrong if I tried. What I learned was that playing internet radiologist is very dangerous and there's a reason my tests were done by people with 8+ years of training!

Of course, it could be triple-negative. But there are many women on this board and others with that diagnosis doing very well. Try not to read too many research papers about statistics, etc. Breast cancer treatment gains more options and knowledge every single year and the literature you read now is often analyzing patients who started treatment 10+ years ago when the options were different/less. So these statistics are no longer valid for people diagnosed today. I started getting very upset about some information about lymph nodes I read in a paper while I was waiting for that biopsy result to come back; I then happened to look more closely at one of the data tables and realized one of the patient groups contained people born in the 1890s. It was a reproduction of a really old paper and was totally irrelevant. This is an extreme example but just be very cautious in your Googling! Statistics are useful only at population level and don't tell you much of anything about you individually, particularly old statistics.

You are in the right place for support and you got this, even if it doesn't seem like this right now. I well remember those horrible first days back in August and I'm in a very different place 3 months later. Focus on self-care for now and take things one step at a time. Best of luck to you!

Hi Nikko. Another TNBC patient here to chime in a bit. I'm getting close to the 4th anniversary of my diagnosis, but remember well the extreme anxiety at the beginning of the process. My blood pressure shot up to something like 180 over something or other, and my PCP prescribed Diazepam(Valium) on the spot to help me get through that period. It helped enormously, but because it's so addictive, I was very judicious with it and only took some when there was no other way to control the anxiety spiral. There were 20 pills in that first script, and I still have some left! Just knowing it was there if I needed it helped me calm down. It also helped me to find a Safe Place in my head where I could retreat. It just sort of happened unintentionally. All I seemed to want to do during the most anxious times was work on jigsaw puzzles and play opera. This was not my normal behavior previously! Then I realized that I was recreating a safe space recalled from my childhood. My mom was a music lover and aspiring opera singer, and I loved working jigsaw puzzles while the music played in the background when I was a kid. Whatever works!! I also found these boards to be a lifesaver through all my treatments. Hoping the best for you!!