Two tests...Scan Anxiety just a little.

[linn65]

Today I will find out if my ankle has poor circulation or continued side effects from chemo, tamox and I just have to deal with it until done. It does feel better because I can walk on it. And maybe I will no nothing about my ankle after this test. I want to know so I know what I can try to do to fix it if anything. My sister gave me some compression socks and I wore those all day yesterday at work. I took them off when I got home from work and had some throbbing but it was okay.

But all of a sudden I thought last night when I put my hand on my bump, and I haven't been rubbing it to try and make it worse like the advice given on this board. Then out of no where I thought OMG what if this is a local reoccurance??? It just hit me out of no where, and I don't know why because all this time I really have just thought it was inflamation and weirdness from my diep flap and that is why I have done nothing (trying not to overreact about every little bump on my body). The ankle problem spurred me to call with my sisters pushing.

It really doesn't seem possible because I was radiated the crap out of all in that area. So I am like others last night I started having scan anxiety......Surely, this is not going to happen already. Like all lumps are 80% benign. Now, I am a little unsettled today. However, I am at work until 1:30, so I will stay busy until my test.

On a positive note Nurse Ratchet (onc nurse) did tell me radiologist will be there to tell me if cells look abnormal by the super sonic ultrasound. Then I will know if all is okay.

[Becky]

Good luck to you. Let us know how things work out. I am thinking about you!

['lizbeth]

Hey,

Just got back from the dentist and saw your post.

What did you find out?

[linn65]

The doctor said my left rib is definitely more prominent then my right. He looked at my last two cat scans the last being one before my radiation in December. And it is different from those. However, he felt when they did surgery my rib shifted and raised. Also, he said because I am thin it makes it even more superficial and if it was cancer it would be easier to see. His diagnosis was a raised rib.....Then, he said but I will do a bone scan and a catscan to take an even closer look. whatever it took for me to sleep at night he would do it because he said you have been through a lot this year, and I want YOU to feel confident. Wow. When he was done talking I felt like he got it without me saying a word, and it made me feel confident in his opinion. I told him I do not want either test, and I was confident if he was and that was good for me.

The other test was a heartscan, and my heart looked good. My ankle I have no answers, but I can walk on it. Soooo I will give it some time idk a couple weeks, and I will call my primary doctor to checkout and order a test.

Finally, the last thing doctor said about bump.....if it changes make sure you call! And I have a doctors appt in January and he said he didn't think anything would be different before then so it's all good....Heck, that's cancer 101 if anything changes in the bump like growing I learned that a year ago.....irony. That's funny to me now. ��

[linn65]

Geez, you have time for a dentist appt? I need to do that too! Butttttt I am going to put that off until next year......please let me not have a toothache now.

[norkdo]

Hi Linn! I was reading your signature line and I was wondering...what stage were u diagnosed at? It seems you are stage three like myself yet you didn't get the mastectomy til december last year even tho u were diagnosed in july.
I have seen this a lot around these boards and with a friend of mine diagnosed a year ago. she, in fact, still has her breast, having only had a lumpectomy and was only stage one or two..is not was.
I dunno. It just seems really mystifying to me...jackie-07, are u reading or lizbeth? anyone? Why are onc's having women keep the breast so long after diagnosis and some...only getting lumpectomies?

['lizbeth]

Our lovely Linn65 did neoadjuvant treatment prior to surgery.

Yep, opted for chemotherapy first.

And since Perjeta has recently been approved for neoadjuvant treatment this will become more and more common.

What happens is that many women have a complete or partial response to treatment. This decreases the invasiveness of the surgery needed to remove the tumor. Many women can opt for a lumpectomy instead of the mastectomy.

Ms. Linn65 is so cutting edge . . .

I got a new crown and will be getting the 2nd one tomorrow. Quite the "Dental Princess".

['lizbeth]

Oh so kiddo you can stop worrying so much about that lumpiness.

As far as your foot goes - stop partying with those tipsy guys with 2 left feet!

So far so good . . .

[linn65]

Norkdo.....My Breast/ONC surgeon said it was not the lump that would kill me it was the spread of the cancer. The most important thing was to stop the spread of the cancer and forget about the lump we could remove that at anytime he said. He said we have to treat it systemically first. Then he said you got HER2 at the right time if there is a right time because of herceptin. HER2 was the driver of the cancer and cancer is like a puzzle and everyone is individual and he said we need to treat it that way. It is not one size fits all.

It all made sense, and I was a human laboratory he said....way cool he thought. But I have to say some people do have PCR (pathological complete response), and I was hoping that or lump noticebly smaller. He said after chemo maybe I could have had a lumpectomy, and maybe I could save my breast. He said he did not believe in staging and when doing chemo first you can not really stage the cancer but sometime through all of this one of my doctors would have guessed a stage 3.

Looking back I would have pushed for the projecta to be added instead of my sister asking and me not pushing. I would have insisted on it and tried to be more demanding of my care. It is not like I would have jumped up and down about another chemo drug, but I would have rather added that and maybe taken away carboplatin or I guess added the 4th. It was all so new and we were all so naive about breast cancer.

Lizbeth, I was never afraid of the bump or now we know raised right rib, but it has always been my ankle.

2 weeks back to work Friday, and OMG it is soooo hard. The mornings are okay the by Noon I am flat out whacked in my brain, body feels like I am dying a slow/painful death, and then I want to cry because when is all this going to end??? Sometimes a day at a time can not even work at times.....YUCK.

[roz123]

I did neoadjuvant chemo too...Nordko I actually started treatment within a week which is way sooner than most women who are waiting for surgery.
I believe most of the larger centers are starting chemo first (before any surgery) for her2 and triple neg tumors over a certain size. At MDA they start at over 2cm. This is done to mainly gauge the effectiveness of chemo on the tumor. From my understanding if you were a lx candidate going into it then you would also be at the end but if your tumor is too large then it would still have to be a msx. The way it was explained to me was that the tumor dies like "swiss cheese" and therefore say you have a 5cm tumor and you only take 3cm of tissue and its tests negative for any invasive cancer there still may be some active cancer between 3-5 cm. Clear as mud?!

linn - hoping your bump is just fat necrosis which is very common with diep surgery

[norkdo]

lizbeth, linn, and roz123 thank you so much for this incredible info. it rocked my world of understanding about treatment of this disease. made me a bit pissed that if my cancer had only waited a bit longer to develop in the first place (soooooo inconsiderate of my cancer!!!) maybe i too would have lucked into this obviously smarter way to treat it. dang. well hell, on second thot, it did (my cancer) have the consideration to wait until herceptin was available so what am i complaining about.
Reason I took so long to reply is that I am still a bit unable to understand what you wrote roz but very interested to know more. lizbeth i cant put in words how appreciative i am of all you have taught me all over these boards and i feel a huge debt of gratitude you have such an excellent mind...and that you are as sweet and cute as it gets too!
Linn: I am in love with your oncologist! Amazing. You are in awesome hands there. Yes, I totally get it now. Kill the progression first. Period. Roz said within a week of biopsy one can start to halt progression. Instead, I waited several weeks for staging. Waited six weeks til mastectomy. Waited six more weeks til chemo (and wound opened, oozing pus anyway) etc. Yeah. A lot of time for the five positive lymph nodes to send cancer to my lungs, bones, liver and brain.
I cannot complain. We have herceptin. We have the best of doctors. Full treatment. Full everything. And here in this country: totally free of charge!!!! With no premiums ever having been paid! And not having to cook blue meth and team up with Aaron Paul to sell it to pay for any of it! (nothing bad meant by this. honest) Just damn grateful is all.
A wise woman (Maya Angelou) once said we do what we do til we know better and then we do that.