Newly diagnosed and getting frustrated!!!

GIRL, I feel like I've found my soul sister!!  I had a baby in Nov. (who wouldn't breast feed) and found a lump when my milk went away.  I, too, have grade 3 and am HER2+.  I was a weak + for ER, but only 2%, so they consider that a neg.  I can totally understand everything you said.  I told them that if it was as aggressive as they say, they I had to be moreso.  My goal is to see my baby grow up and if this is what I have to do, then bring it on!  I had a bilateral mast. in March and began 15 mos. of chemo in April.  I'm also dealing with the whole work thing.  Luckily for me, I had lots of sick leave saved up from 16 years of teaching.  I took 14 weeks of maternity leave (6 weeks of which was unpaid since technically I was released to work at 8 weeks) and used just about the rest of it for surgery, chemo, etc.  Now I have the summer.  I finish my first course of AC tomorrow and will begin weekly Taxol and Herceptin for 12 weeks.  Then I will have Herceptin every 3 weeks for 9 more months. You're so right, it does seem endless.  I understand the whole "get the show on the road" thing.  The waiting feels like forever.  You can almost hear the cancer eating at you in the night.  It's really not, though, even as aggressive as ours is, I was told that all breast cancers are relatively slow growing.  Our cancer has probably been there for years and years before we ever discovered it.  It's so funny, yesterday I said the same thing about not having done a lot of babbling and ranting to anyone because I'm trying to be so upbeat.  It's really nice to talk to someone who "gets it".  I think because we are so upbeat and pos. that people think we're OK.  We ARE OK, but sometimes we just need to talk to someone who understands.  Hang in there, we're going to be looking back on this years from now when our boys graduate, get married and have kids of their own!

Shannon 

Jacobsmom,

Can you go on short term disability?  I was diagnosed in 11/07, went on short term disability during my chemo and radiation.  I worked 20 hours per week so was paid my salary for those 20 hours and 60% of my salary for the other 20 that was std.  Once I hit 3 months, I went on long term disability.  Same process accept I had to apply for it through an ltd insurance company, but got approved.

Was it you that made the appt. w/ the Onc?  My BS office made my appt and it was 2 weeks after my surgery.  You do have to heal enough to start chemo, so if you just had your surgery, it's normal to wait 6 weeks to start chemo. 

I'm wondering about radiation.  I believe the normal action is to have radiation after mastectomy if your tumor was over 5cm (mine was 7.5cm) or you have 4+ positive nodes.  Why are they recommending radiation for such a small tumor and one positive node?

hugs to you!

Lynn