Too Many Positive Nodes and Reoccurance

michele u · 07-27-2007, 09:22 PM

Dear Faith in Him,
Yes, i had 35 positive nodes! All the nodes they took out were positive. I'm going to be 4 years out next month, no recurrence. I'm getting my port taken out on monday. i was going to wait til 5 years but it is not working---so out it goes. Don't get caught up in the number game. Cancer does not follow direction very well! It does wants it's going to do--not what the dr's tell us. I had a year of Herceptin at dx, that's what is helping fighting this from coming back!! If you have any questions, please email me at mulmer@mainstaycomm.net

michka · 07-28-2007, 12:31 AM

Hi everybody,
Speaking about positive lymph nodes I have a question that keeps filling my head and you may help me: I had neoadjuvant chemo before mastectomy. I was T2N1. The chemo shrunk the tumor from 3 cm to 1,2 cm. The pathology report of the axillary node dissection indicated 3 positive out of 5. I understand that the chemo worked partially which worries me a lot but why only 5 nodes? Why so little? Did the others disappear? Does this mean I will never know how many I had to start with? Did they not take out enough nodes?
I'll take all opinions about this.
Michka

michele u · 07-28-2007, 08:16 PM

i think you are right about not really knowing for sure if you have neoadjuvant chemo. You could have had more, but as you can tell by this thread, that the rules don't always apply to lymph node numbers anyway, esp since Herceptin is around. You are going to be fine if you've had more lymph node involvement or not!!