It was good to see the breast surgeons for second and then third opinions. Everyone concurs that I do have IBC however I also have a big lump/tumour and my breast does not look at all like what IBC looks like on the internet. Which is why I had doubted it. Wish someone had told me earlier! I was left quite confused by the fact that their opinions about my course of treatment were actually conflicting and opposite. Perhaps sometimes there can be too many cooks!
The original surgeon I saw previously when I got my diagnosis did not need or want to examine me and was reading the MRI report and was just saying this is a lazy report with no detail and effectively a non result. You were on the wrong chemo. It didn’t work. To be expected. Now you are on the right/targeted treatment. Should work. Great. She agreed that it was IBC without looking at the breast and said this was in her letter referring me to the hospital weeks ago. I don’t remember her telling me that back then but I must have just not picked up on that important detail properly.
I am kind of glad in a way I got to start treatment thinking my prospects were a lot better. Got me oriented to being more hopeful. Which I still am, even when I know this is a bad diagnosis. Perhaps I am just in deep denial or have deluded optimism but I feel like I am going to survive this no matter what the statistics say.
When I was collecting my show bag of films from the “best” surgeon who was not going to see me to take it all to the other surgeon I was then offered an appointment. Because of her great reputation and because I had wanted to see her so much I decided to take it. She took the time to examine me well and to look at all my scans and reports but her opinion was that my team had jumped the gun in taking me off AC chemo and onto the targeted treatment and that I should have had more AC. She thought that my breast seemed to have improved a lot from the chemo. However she acknowledged that she was basing this on what she saw on the mammogram and ultrasound because it was the first time she’d seen me. Anyway what is done is done I guess (AC and Herceptin don’t mix and I’m already on Herceptin) and my treating doctors have gone the middle way between these differing opinions. Also both of these people are breast surgeons and not medical oncologists and my condition is very rare. So it is not surprising that they did not agree on what should be happening in my treatment.
I am in the country having a break between chemos and spent the day planting veggies yesterday and went to a really fun 50th birthday party today. It was kind of hard having to tell a few old friends about the stuff I have been going through but on the whole I had a really good time. Trying to remain positive and hopeful and my breast lump did feel quite a bit smaller this morning. However now that I know the cancer is splashed around the whole boob I’m not sure if that’s of much consequence.
