How important is taking hormone blockers after surgery for IDC?

I feel like The OncotypeDX test is the most important test you can get. It looks at the tumor that was removed. It is an indicator of reoccurrence percentages. Mine was 22 - so in the middle gray area. I did not need chemo, but my oncologist who I trust wanted me to take an AI for 5 years. I was 62, so agreed. I agree this is a personal decision and you mut weigh quality of life. Something like 60% of women have NO side effects. I've personally met several who completed the full 5 years with none. So make the decision that is best for you.

Lynne, it sounds as if the OncotypeDX helped a lot as it triggered a more comprehensive treatment plan. Do I have that right?

I'm awfully sorry to read that the wily cancer for resurfaced but at least you threw everything available at it and will do so again. Recurrence is a haunting thought but the flip side of that is the ten years that it took for it to do so. I keep reminding myself of the cancer success statistics of even forty years ago versus today. In a sense, a lot of recurrences only happen because we're able to live long enough. And have better weapons. An irony of sorts but we're here to ponder it and, if need be, fight again!

Will you be having surgery soon and get a treatment plan in place? I'm sorry that you're dealing with yet another chapter of this story ...

After several biopsies, I was diagnosed with Invasive Lobular BC , Hr+, HER2-in both breasts in August 2021. I had both breasts and sentinal nodes removed in late October 2021. Nodes and margins clear. OncoDX is 11. I started letrozole in December. I developed severe carpal tunnel and trigger fingers in both hands, severe body and bone pain, trouble sleeping, and depression. I stopped after 5 months. My Onco suggested a short break. A nurse from her office was supposed to follow up after a few weeks. No one called so I took the summer off and did a lot of research. I decided to try building my immune system and using a natural compound called DIM
to try to suppress estogen. Along with all the supplements I have taken for years, I added Turkey Tail Mushrooms and a combination of mushrooms called Mycommunity, both from Host Defense. I added Mercola fermented turmeric and annato tocotrienols (a form of Vit E). Anyway, I just had my 6 month check-in with my Onco a few days ago. It took a few extra months to schedule. We discussed starting AI's again. I expressed my concerns about bone loss (I have osteopenia), thinning arteries in the heart, (I've had a heart attack) and the other issues I experienced. She said my chance of recurrance increased because BC was found in both breasts. That meant two breast cancers. She also said that if I wasn't experiencing side effects with the AI's, it wasn't working. She told my partner and I that if I stopped taking the AI's that she could only see me once a year for screening which is palpation of the chest area along the scar. (I did not go through reconstruction. One surgery was enough for me. I am 69 going on 70 this year.) She doesn't do any other screening. I will have to rely on my PCP for a 6 month intererval of palpation. I feel like I was" left out to dry" by my Dr. and my hopeful feelings dashed. It has been a week and I am trying to regain my sense of hope and resolve that I/We can choose what feels right for myself, my family and my quality of life. I am going to seek out a practitioner who will test my hormone levels. I do have a base line from a test my Naturopath did several years ago.

I am so disappointed in our traditional health care, and particularly healthcare for women. I can only guess that I am a lower risk patient than My Dr."s other patients. I will take that as a good thing. This is really my first experience with traditional medicine. I waded through it with my mother, and did not enjoy it. Good luck and blessings, as you move forward on this crazy journey.

My heart attack led to the discovery of the breast cancer, and the bone scan was done just prior to the double mastectomy, to establish a base line.

I saw my radiologist today for a 10 month checkup. We discussed AI's and how most women (including me) do not want to take them. He advised me that lumpectomy with radiation puts an ER+ breast cancer woman back to the starting point. But, remember, we who have had BC have a hormone imbalance that caused breast cancer to begin with. Our odds of a new primary are higher than those who have not suffered our cancer. While research shows that radiation improves our risk of same breast, ipsilateral, recurrence, hormone blockers improve our risk against new primaries and metastatic cancer. So, it seems that we have some ability to effectively change our estrogen environment with diet and exercise, still, there is no validation that alternative measures will thwart recurrence, new primaries, and/or metastasis. In his own family, my radiologist said, his mother had BC twice after stopping endocrine therapy following a high grade DCIS diagnosis. She had an initial lumpectomy with radiation, then a mastectomy after recurrence, and more recently a second lumpectomy after a new primary in the remaining breast. We all have to weigh our personal risk and SEs vs benefit of taking these drugs. The same goes for radiation after early stage IDC and DCIS. I chose hyper-fractionated radiation over none, given my early stage IDC pathology; and tamoxifen then anastrozole over none given my high estrogen count. I know these are hard decisions for all of us!

Yes on the 24th...still many questions... So many conflicts with the ultrasound and CT scan... Feel something not right..getting copies of all ultrasound pictures...they also were all different from each other.. Clinic is like Assembly line do ten biopsy a day or more was told. Tech hurt me with ultrasound... Will talk with surgeon Friday...she said surgery will take hour..I had bad reaction to anesthesia in 2016 so kind of scared and no one to help me or support and am 86 now.

Meant on the 14th...say a prayer..

I'm sure that many of us have and will. To misquote whoever first said it decades ago, "We're all in this together alone."

I don't know that we get breast cancer because of any hormone 'imbalance'. I'm not saying that it's not accurate but I've never been told that by oncologists or my Ob-Gyn, or read it in any reliable studies, and have had hormone testing through the years. If a simple hormone imbalance were the triggering agent for breast cancer that could make the search for a cause a lot easier. And we could all be monitored for hormone balance annually as a safeguard. And insurers would happily cover it.

My impression is we get breast cancer because there's something causing breast cancer. One oncologist cited the fact that Japanese women, living in japan, have a far lower rate of breast cancer but, within a generation of moving to the United States, have the same elevated rate that we have. Clearly the women's genetics aren't modified by moving to the United States so something else is the causative variable.
Diet will be part of the answer but most first generation Japanese Americans do not modify their diets from what they ate in Japan so that leaves environmental and maybe food contaminants as a likely suspect but not yet proven as my guess.

I read a book by a female physician and Harvard professor who noted that the female body is designed to protect the fetus from toxicities and stores anything that it can't deal with, or excrete or rid the body of, in fat cells. That is, one job of fat cells is to store bad stuff and keep it out of the bloodstream. Her point was also that when dieting, or going through any kind of change of eating habits, that is critical to drink a lot of good-quality water and also pay attention to any symptoms of discomfort and monitor liver and kidney enzymes.

Since fat is a storage of contaminants as well as, as one doctor put it, an estrogen factory, fat plays a role in many cancers. (Which is alarming to read for someone, like me, who's been a lifelong serial dieter fighting against easy weight gain.)

So we have the biology for procreation and protecting offspring and the downside consequences of that if what I've read holds up.

At the same time, this argues that a change in diet that both increases nutrition, is weighted towards foods so far known to be antioxidants and natural anti-inflammatories, and losing some extra fat stores, seems like a strategy that can only do us good. And will likely boost immunity in myriad ways as well. As my brothers' doctors stressed when he was dealing with myriad health challenges, food is medicine.