Original Diagnosis

Monday, August 14, I had a consultation with a surgeon. The ultrasound and biopsy showed that I had invasive lobular carcinoma. This is why the tumor was not round, but flat with tentacle like offshoots. It also showed it was not large, 1.6 centimeters (16 millimeters, or .63 inches) at the longest part. The best news was that the lymph nodes looked normal, so no worries about it having spread beyond the original tumor.

This was all positive. The surgeon said he would be able to perform a lumpectomy, cut out the tumor only, rather than a mastectomy, cut off the whole breast. He could do this before I went through chemotherapy because of the small size of the tumor. 

The oncologist confirmed everything the surgeon said when I saw her on August 31. She added that the tumor was grade 2. They are graded 1-3, 1 being slow growing, and 3 fast growing.

The biopsy also showed that the tumor tested positive for estrogen and progesterone, meaning that it feeds off those hormones. Being post menopausal it surprised me that my body created enough hormones to feed cancer cells. I have since learned that our bodies also make hormones in fat and other parts of our bodies throughout our lives. I guess this is why we have a higher risk of getting cancer when we are overweight.

This tumor was also positive for a protein I had never heard of - Human Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor 2 (HER2). All women have this protein on the surface of their breast cells. It makes sure the cells divide as needed to replace damaged or dying cells. In some women the HER2 proteins mutate; they make more copies of themselves than they are supposed to. That means more proteins, and more HER2 proteins means more breast cells divide and grow and become cancerous tumors. This is not a good thing.

Testing positive for HER2 just 15 years ago was an automatic death sentence. It is a very aggressive cancer. But since then a drug, Herceptin, has been developed. This drug is different from chemotherapy drugs in that it targets only the HER2 protein. Chemo drugs kill everything in your body, good and bad. Herceptin attacks and kills only the tumors themselves. This means it is now easier to kill the cancer cells if they test positive for HER2. Herceptin works best when you find the cancer early rather than later.

Cancer has five levels of severity. Stage 0 is precancerous, and stage 4 is metastatic. This means it has spread beyond the initial tumor to other parts of your body. I was fortunate in that mine was caught early, and my clinical prognostic stage was 1a.