[agness]

Wow. That is a lot of audacity. No, you get to decide who does your reconstruction.

If I hadn't don't my research the standard of care for me would have been left mastectomy and full ALND. But I had been breastfeeding at the time of my diagnosis and I knew where the tissue was damaged as it was no longer producing milk there.

Based on a study that had been done looking at neoadjuvant chemo and SND as a predictor of response in the axilla we were able to get my surgeon on board with less invasive surgery, given my HER2 diagnosis they easily offered me lumpectomy instead of mastectomy.

My sense after 6 rounds of TCHP and an MRI and ultrasound showed the tumor had dissolved was that surgery wasn't needed, that if anything was left if was microscopic and rads could take care of it. Still, there is little to no data available on forgoing surgery and none about doing this after neoadjuvant TCHP. I resigned myself to having the lumpectomy and SND which I had this week. My pathology report came back quickly - no cancer was found anywhere and my lymph node showed scarring.

TCHP is working and the doctors can't even keep up with the results.