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My story:
mammogram showed suspicious spot-May '05
biopsy-(lumpectomy)-7mm invasive lobular tumor, did not get clear margin as surrounding tissue had invasive lobular in situ. Tumor was ER+ PR+ Her2+
my decision was for a bilateral mastectomy-done June '05...no other cancer was found. nodes (one on right side, 2 on left) were negative.
I wanted the bilateral for several reasons. One, invasive lobular cancer spreads single cell and is often undetected (I was lucky mine showed up on mammogram...everyone said I should be the mammogram poster child) and can recur in the other breast more often than other types of cancers...even though nothing was there at time of biopsy. And it seems that among the women I know who have had breast cancer (an alarming number of them), those who had lumpectomies or only one breast removed either had recurrences and then needed more surgeries...or in 2 cases by the time they realized it had spread they had serious problems and have since died. And everyone said that they regretted not having the mastectomies done in the first place. The way I looked at it..no breasts greatly reduced my chances of a recurrence in the breast!
I have not had one moment of regret as to my decision. I did not have any reconstruction done and am healing up quite well.
I had 4 cycles of A/C and am doing a year of herceptin. Also 5 years of Arimidex.
Good luck in your decision...ask lots of questions, get as many opinions as you can and most importantly, you have to feel right about your decision and then it will BE right!!!
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