Hi! Welcome to a community of wonderful women brought together by less than wonderful circumstances 🙃
I love your picture! You look like a vivacious, fun lady. Did you fly that tiny plane (glider?!)
So, breast cancer. It sucks. Someone else said getting the news is the hardest part, and it was for me! The news was a huge shock, and I cried alone in parking garages after appointments a few times, because I didn’t want anyone else to feel the sadness and fear. I realize that’s probably not the best or healthiest thing to do. It’s clearly not something I could keep secret for long, and telling my kids (ages 8 and 11) and my mom and brothers was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
I had the same order of things as you might have; surgery, chemo, radiation. Now I’m 1.5 years into ten years of endocrine/hormone therapy (trying to get rid of estrogen that my cancer used to grow, in order to reduce my risk of recurrence).
***Your treatment plan will depend on a lot of different factors. I previously thought that breast cancer was one beast, and that you tried to slay it with one sword. Turns out there are many types/variations of breast cancer, with many weapons used against them!***
You will probably learn a whole new language. My cancer was Stage 2A, IDC and DCIS, ER/PR+, HER2-, grade 3, Oncotype DX 20, one lymph node positive, high KI-67%…TBH, I enjoyed (? sounds weird) leaning as much as I could about this stuff. A note about staging; there is clinical staging and pathological staging. Based on my initial imaging and biopsy, I was thought to be Stage 1 (clinical dx); after my lumpectomy and sentinel lymph node biopsy, I was upgraded (ha) to Stage 2A (pathological dx, based on tumor size, grade, and lymph node involvement, things impossible to know with certainty before surgery). That change in stage was a huge blow to me! I guess I didn’t realize it might be worse than originally thought.
There will be so many appointments in the beginning; after my routine mammogram and callback mammo, ultrasound, and biopsy, I got the news, then an appointment with the breast surgeon, an MRI, back to the breast surgeon, Magseed placement, genetic testing…I’ll have to look back in my calendar to see what else!
After healing up from surgery (lumpectomy and sentinel lymph node biopsy), I started chemo (4 treatments of taxotere/cytoxan, one every three weeks). Then onto radiation; 33 treatments, every day Monday through Friday. Now the hormone therapy. There’s a lot more in there; for chemo, there’s meeting with the oncologist, port placement, blood testing, injections to boost white blood cell count, check-ins with the onc…For radiation, there’s meeting with the rad doc, rad “simulation” and getting a body mold made, tattoos (!), check-ins with rad doc…It’s a lot.
Now, two years post-diagnosis, I can’t believe how fast it all went! Yes, it’s terrifying and you don’t know what the heck to expect, but like someone said, you just follow the plan, one step at a time, and then you’re out on the other side of it.
Everybody, I’m so sorry to be so long-winded! Missi66, keep us posted! There are lots of great threads here that have been super helpful to me.
Best to everyone 😘

Sarah