[Audrey]

I'm sorry to hear of your mother's cancer diagnosis. I was diagnosed on my birthday, too--I like what you told her about it being a gift of empowerment... it's true, although I didn't appreciate that at the time. Anyway, my original diagnosis was DCIS and I opted to have a mastectomy (with no further treatment planned), but then the pathology report came back with findings of invasive cancer. Don't mean to scare you with this, but, as Becky said earlier, you have to make sure there is no invasive cancer involved, too. My surgeon didn't bother to take any lymph nodes at the time of my mastectomy (since the initial biopsy showed only DCIS), so after invasive cancer was found I had to go back for axillary dissection surgery, just to check for cancerous lymph nodes (I had 11 positive nodes). So basically after being told it was "just DCIS--Stage 0" it turned out to be actually invasive cancer, Stage III. Fortunately, I had aggressive chemo, radiation and Herceptin and am doing FINE now, six years later, Thank God. I'll pray your mom doesn't have to go through any of this, that it is just a stage 0, non-invasive cancer. She and Ed are lucky to have you to lean on! Sending you a big hug,--Audrey