Dear Becky,
I couldn't find your message but finally located it. I was originally diagnosed in 1995 (dec) with breast cancer on the left breast, had a lumpectamy and 36 radiation treatments. Was fine for 1 yrs, kept up with all necessary tests, mammograms, etc. In Feb of 2006 began noticing something that was not right, went to gyn and he sent me to a breast surgeon. I had biopsy April 27 of this yr, he thought everything looked okay, told my family he thought everything was fine. On Mon he called and told me it was malignant. The next day I saw him again and he needed to do wider margins but first had to have some other tests. Had sentinel node done around May 10 and had wider margins and lymph nodes done on May 12, first lymph node was malignant but others were all okay as well as other tissue. Then began rounds of bone scan, something showed up, had MRI, diag with stage IV metastatic cancer, onc sent me to radiation oncologist, had 18 treatments on spine, lungs, esophygus affected also and difficulty eating, swallowing, etc. Not fun. Started chemo after port put in during all this. Am still doing Herceptin and Aridia every 3 weeks, having some more back pain but can't do surgery because of chemo, it prevents healing and causes infection. Don't know how much longer I'll be doing the treatments, maybe for a long time. Hope this answers your question.
ginkott1@aol.com