The good, the bad and the ugly. The good is that the DCIS was still in situ and not a tumor invading large amounts of tissue. Also good is the druggable targets of hormone receptors.
The bad is the future risk of recurrence in either breast. Also bad, the possible treatments your doctor will recommend.
Lastly the ugly, I don’t mean ugly physically. Ugly is the anxiety and devastation from this diagnosis at an age where you think you are too young and too busy and too strong to have breast cancer.
I hear your concern over the increased risk in the other breast, this should factor in to your decision, but not the only factor.. I remember having so much anxiety over recurrence and deciding to ask for a bilateral mastectomy, to be told by the local oncologist (thankfully retired now) that “we don’t do that anymore”. I was not online at the time, and I did not work in a medical field so how was I to know different. So I got the lumpectomy and I worried. The other side of that coin is that I talk to a lot of people here on connect and as a patient advocate locally and those who get mastectomies do not worry less. So the decision you make will have to best the best decision for you.
I would like to add “The Great” . This is the new awareness of your life, being thankful for all of the things you have taken for granted, this is the gift from cancer. It got me off the working treadmill and fundamentally changed the way I view every situation.
I hope some of the questions and some of the conversation here will take some of the confusion out of this and help you start making decisions.
Have you talked with your family about this yet? What surgery and/ or treatment is your doctor recommending?