Colleen,
Thank you for your reply on this. You said something that hadn't hit home for me. It was a lightbulb moment. I am undecided what to do about my ALH/LCIS diagnosis after biopsy. I've seen several doctors for their opinions and had a plastic surgeon breast consultation. I was assuming in my head that skipping the lumpectomy and considering double mastectomy would skip some unnecessary steps and remove further possibility of getting BC or repeat offender incidents with ALH/LCIS. I did not think about the possibility that if they did mastectomy with reconstruction and what they find is more invasive than what the biopsy showed, that radiation might be recommended and tamoxifen for 5 years too--AND TO YOUR POINT--RADIATION CAN CAUSE CHANGES TO THE RECONSTRUCTED BREAST AND INCREASE RISK OF SCAR TISSUE. I'm trying to figure out why I didn't think of that? Why I didn't ask that? Why I wasn't told that. I had it in my head that once you do the double mastectomy with my situation, that you do not have any of that other protocol (yearly mammograms/ yearly MRI's / yearly ultrasounds) you don't have to do the tamoxifen either. Would it be fair to say that there is a pretty good percentage of people that definitely do the lumpectomy first (even if they plan to do prophylactic double mastectomy) to confirm with certainty that they do not have cancer that the biopsy didn't show? I don't know...just curious??I learn more every day!