Hi thank you. I am going to look for a second opiomion for sure. I am not very good at advocating for myself. Not like for my kids. I would feel better with a PET scan. Would have to find a different doctor

Also, I wish you the best. I never took Tamoxifan, it made my RA worse and I had an allergic reaction. So 12 years no other treatment than the i itial chemo. Really, sending my best.

I don't think doctors can say whether, when or if breast cancer can or cannot occur or 'reoccur.' There's no definitive data to support that level of assurance. They can cite the statistics currently thought to be the most reliable but that's about it. And, as noted, unfortunately, one episode of cancer doesn't promise us a cancer-free remainder of life.

On the other hand, our bodies are fighting off rogue cells daily that never get a chance to hunker down and multiply. I was worried about having a large-needle biopsy, thinking that the very process of extracting cells could maybe disturb a stable colony of them and trigger some kind of dispersion. I found studies looking at that as a risk and a few noted that they in fact found that lone rogue cells outside the tumor areas tended to kind of die off and not be able to achieve critical mass. I realize that this raises the question as to how their former colleagues were able to achieve critical mass in the first place but I decided to take some reassurance from those observations. At the time I was kind of in shock to even learn of a lump that needed to be biopsies in my body so I was worrying about everything. (What I didn't need to worry about was having excellent doctors at every step of the way. I had recently, for totally unrelated reasons, found a new PCP at a top-ranked institution and ponder how I would have done without that quality, efficiency and support at such a confusing time.)