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Early Breast Cancer Treatment Decision
Melski
Member Posts: 3 ✭
Hi All, I recently was diagnosed with early breast cancer (stage 1, grade 2, HER Negative, Estrogen & Prog positive, no lymph nodes involve) three weeks ago I had a double mastectomy with tissue expanders for reconstruction.
I now need to choose my treatment for post surgery. For my particular case the percentage for survival purely doing the double mastectomy surgery alone is 95% when I add hormone blocker treatment it adds another 1% so 96% total which has been recommended by my oncologist to take which I will. I have been also given the option to decide if I want to also do chemo or not, the percentage benefit for my specific cancer is less than 1% at about 0.3% (so the percentage still stays at 96% survival)
Is there anyone with a similar case to mine and what you decided? Or if it was you what you would do?
My immediate thoughts are for a 0.3% benefit that going through 6 months of chemo with everything that comes with that is perhaps not worth doing it? The other thing I will point out is if there are any tiny microcells left in my body anywhere that hormone blockers will stop them dividing and growing, but chemo would actually kill them. Bearing in mind there is no guarantee either way that reoccurrence will or won't happen.
Thoughts?
I now need to choose my treatment for post surgery. For my particular case the percentage for survival purely doing the double mastectomy surgery alone is 95% when I add hormone blocker treatment it adds another 1% so 96% total which has been recommended by my oncologist to take which I will. I have been also given the option to decide if I want to also do chemo or not, the percentage benefit for my specific cancer is less than 1% at about 0.3% (so the percentage still stays at 96% survival)
Is there anyone with a similar case to mine and what you decided? Or if it was you what you would do?
My immediate thoughts are for a 0.3% benefit that going through 6 months of chemo with everything that comes with that is perhaps not worth doing it? The other thing I will point out is if there are any tiny microcells left in my body anywhere that hormone blockers will stop them dividing and growing, but chemo would actually kill them. Bearing in mind there is no guarantee either way that reoccurrence will or won't happen.
Thoughts?
1
Comments
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Hi @Melski
I'm same stage grade and hormone status. Mine was Invasive Lobular. Although there ended up being 2 tumours, luckily both removed with lumpectomy, I didn't need chemotherapy as the largest tumour was less than 2cm and 3x sentinel lymph nodes were clear. It was explained that chemo is dependent on tumour size ie 2cm or greater. Instead I had 5 weeks radiation them started on 20mg Tamoxifen for at least 5 years but the plan is 10 years.
Good luck with everything.2 -
Thanks Aska, yeah my tumour was 15mm so pretty small , good luck with everything1