Lumpectomy Lounge....let's talk!
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Vargadoll, glad everything went well!
Yay, Caligirl! You made it! So glad for you!
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Good to hear from you, Vargadoll. Keep icing and take care of yourself. Congratulations, Caligirl!!
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Thank you Trish, Mamasha & Miko Yay for no more Rads 🎉🎉 now I can start. Healing
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Caligirl yeah....... happy happy happy
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Caligirl55-Yea! Rads complete. Enjoy you newly uninterrupted days. Wishing you peace and healing now that you're done
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Vargadoll - Happy to hear you are past surgery. Follow doctors orders and take comfort in an important step to your recovery completed! Wishing you pain-free rest and healing.
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Well they just called me and now I have a surgery date. March 7, which is my birthday! But I think the best present I can give myself is taking care of myself.
I have a question: the surgeon said that there was an article saying that radiation is not necessary in women over 70 because it didn't result in better survival rates. So she said that since I'm turning 69, I could opt not to have radiation. I'm kind of on the fence about it because I'm younger than the lower cutoff of that study group and who knows what my life expectancy is. I also wonder if there was just one study or if there's already a consensus in the field.
So I'd love to get other people's perspectives on it! Thanks!
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Natsera, for me, at 69, by the time of my surgery and then rads, I was happy to go through radiation. I would have done chemo also if indicated. I wanted (and still want) to do everything to KILL CANCER. That was my goal then and still is. I had no trouble with radiation. It seems to me to be a good way to kill any stray cancer cells that might have been left. Of course, YOU have to decide what is best for you. I would not have been comfortable skipping radiation - you may be. Make sure you get all the information you can on the pros and cons, and then decide what works for YOU! Good luck.
HUGS!!
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Caligirl, Congratulations and Welcome to the Cheering Section.. so glad you are over all that, and now just rest and heal...
I have a question... They told me I had a seroma, but when i wear a bra, at night when I take it off, I have a lump... it goes away overnight, but always after I wear my bra for awhile.. does or has anyone had this problem?
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Well, my DH just put my 30yo son on notice. He needs to get a job and get out by March 9. We have been patient with him since he was laid off in November. Since then he has done pretty much nothing but eat, sleep, drink, and play video games at all hours. He had two calls today for interviews tomorrow. Even though I know it has to happen this way (my son would be just as happy to live out his days sleeping and playing video games), we aren't doing him or ourselves any good by perpetuating this situation. DS is a welder with several certificates, so it's not as if he has no skill. In fact, welding is a well-paying profession, but you have to get up off your butt and go to where the jobs are.
Just yesterday DH came to me with a "great plan" --are you ready for this? He wants to put the house on the market in a couple weeks, bring our 26-ft camper back down to Atlanta, park it at some random RV park, and live it for 6 months while the house sells. When I pointed out to him that Hey! I'm still working! I need a good internet connection. We'll need cable, so we can watch more than MASH videos. And we'll have to put all our things in storage until we figure out what to do next. All that is going to cost at least $400/mo on top of whatever the site rental would be (usually around $550/mo). That doesn't sound like a great plan to me. And it's really all because DH just wants to get DS30 out of the house!
I hate hate HATE confrontation, and thankfully, DS accepted his dad's pronouncement calmly. I worry because DS has bipolar disorder and has been suicidal in the past. Honestly, we do live in fear that some day we will get "that call", you know? But I just can't be held captive any longer.
Right now, DS30 is upstairs complaining to DD23 ,who is professionally running circles around him, lives in her own place, and wouldn't live at home as long as she has the energy to crawl down I-75 to work. How these two could be so different is beyond me. But clearly we haven't done a good job of launching DS.
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Poodles, Probably good that DS is going to have launch himself, ready or not. I understand about the worries but maybe take it one step at a time.
DH has to be nuts to want to live in a 26 ft camper while you sell the house. An extra $1000 month is just what your budget needs. Good that he wants to sell the house. Maybe put him to work decluttering
. I know you want to sell but I doubt this is how you planned on doing it. Sounds like DH is ready to embark on the next phase of your lives. That's good. The implementation just sounds, uh, challenging. Good luck!HUGS!
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Challenging is the word, Peggy! sometimes DH goes off on these tears and the things he comes up with~ Just, noooo....I mean, I love our little camper--it's about the size of a Tiny House--but I think living in it full-time, in the wind, in the heat, in the rain, would drive me out of my mind. We do need to sell the house, but we also need to have a legitimate PLAN before we do it.
Right now I have enough of a challenge going on with my mother who is literally hanging on for dear life, as her kidneys have all but shut down. She a tough old nurse and she's not going to give in easily. In the meantime, we kids are trying to figure out her financial things and how they will impact her estate. We just found out that the house is still in her dead husband's name, so she doesn't have clear title to the house. We need to meet with her attorney to figure out what we need to do going forward and how that might affect her estate. And the estate is quite complicated because her husband's Will, as regards the disposition of this house, hasn't' been fully settled. ARRGH! Just kill me now.
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natsera - As others on this forum have noted, this has to be your decision in consultation with your oncology team. I am fast approaching 71 and agree with others that until the treatment is more "awful" than not treatment, I will opt for recommended treatment. I don't want to look back 10 years from now and say "I wish I had opted for X treatment." My mother and maternal grandmother lived well into their 90's and I expect to do the same. My oncologist, who I know has the reputation for aggressive treatment plans, certainly felt strongly that I should consider long term chemo (taxol and herception) because I am triple positive. If you are looking only at a single study, I suggest you make certain how many were involved and what their cancer markers were. Surgery on your birthday is the pitts unless you look at it as the next year of your life, one that will be different than the last to say the least, but still a new beginning. (As an aside, I had brain surgery on my 40th wedding anniversary 10 years ago and that philosophy kept me in good stead.) We'll be thinking of you. I hope you have a good support system in place. Don't forget you can always ask for a second or third opinion. Looks like you live in a major metropolitan area and you should be able to find other practices.
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Poodles, You sure do need a plan to sell the house. It is not easy - at least it was hard for me. Decluttering was a royal pain. Living full time in a tiny house doesn't appeal to me. Good luck with that one.
I cannot the awful mess your mother's finances are in. Time to go drinking. When the house isn't even in her name. Geez. It's all far too depressing. More luck to you.
HUGS!
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TOMORROW IS MY LAST RADIATION TREATMENT!!!!! I'm also having a massage!!!!!
I'm lucky I didn't have to deal with chemo like some of you ladies but I'm going to remember to be gentle to myself and not expect to be back to normal. In fact I know because of my family's experience with my son having AML two years ago ( full remission), that the previous normal is not coming back and we will have to find the new normal. I will also be finding my way back on the mat at karate, once I can wear a bra and stand up for the whole class.
I've been lucky with tamoxifen, not too many se, I would encourage everyone to at least give it a try so you can get every bit of protection against recurrence
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natsera, I have a different perspective, based on the fact that research is ever-more-quickly refining standards and cutoffs (e.g., City of Hope now considers “no tumor on ink” to be a sufficiently "clean margin” and in very early bc is even rethinking sentinel-node biopsy). When I was scheduling my rads, I was 64 going on 65. My RO had just finished a study proving that in Stage IA Luminal A women >65, there was no difference in survival (whether disease-free or from all causes) between the standard 5-week 33-treatment whole-breast protocol vs.16 hypofractionated targeted tumor-bed-only radiation. He said I was a good candidate, because the next phase of the study was likely to lower the cutoff age to >60. So if your RO tells you that you can skip rads entirely at 69, I’d take her advice. Radiation has consequences—not just the beneficial ones.
Doing “all you can to kill cancer” is not the same as doing all you should, which is sometimes doing less. “All I could,” if defined literally, would have entailed a long whole-breast protocol (and with an Oncotype of 16, which is the higher end of “low risk” a full course of chemo as well. Radiation “kills” cancer cells from the inside out (just as your “burn” SE’s and your healing from them will). Just as there is little to no practical difference between 64 and 65, so too between 69 and 70. We are older, with more comorbidities, and may not be able to handle those SEs as well as do the "younger seniors.” If you have doubts, you could also go back and opt for radiation. But it can’t be reversed (and if you later opt for mastectomy with reconstruction—or a post-lumpectomy oncoplastic reconstruction for symmetry, your recon options are considerably fewer with irradiated tissue). With all due respect to our Peggy, she is an unusually “young” septuagenarian—and her rads were administered before the newer studies that revised the protocols. There comes a point in our lives where fixing one thing breaks another ad infinitum. And a point of diminishing returns, when the chance of “killing cancer” might be a form of overkill that is likelier to do us permanent harm (if not kill us).
We don’t know how much more time we have when it comes to other stuff that’d probably take our lives—and when the “do-all-you-can” course of action makes that time less enjoyable or even less tolerable. That your RO believes you can safely skip rads tells me you’ve reached the point where your quality of life is likelier to be lessened while the quantity wouldn’t be increased.
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Sandy, very true. We do need to weigh the consequences of our treatments. Am I going to eventually have SEs from my rads? Maybe. Maybe not. But for me, it was the right thing. There were no studies that indicated perhaps I should skip radiation. I trusted (and still do) all my oncologists and believe they had my best interests at heart. You're right that I don't know how much longer I have. None of us do. That proverbial bus is out there. I am never going to tell someone to have a treatment. I will share my experience and tell them to weigh all the pros and cons and decide what is best for them. You provide an excellent counterpoint to my post and I appreciate it. You have information that I did not have. Thank you.
HUGS!
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One split-second before that bus hits me, that piano falls from a building, that bullet from a drive-by shatters my skull or that bolt of lightning permanently short-circuits my ticker, I want to have had the best QOL possible and feel as good as I could.
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Yup. Exactly. Thus we made the choices we did. Others will make different choices that will work just as well for them.
HUGS!
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Hard times. I got the results of what was supposed to be the last of a series of CT scans today because of spots they found in my lungs in 2014. They have been stable up til now, so I was expecting the all-clear, but it turns out that there are new spots. They are very tiny but I'm once again shocked because I don't know what they are and they are too tiny to biopsy. And because my mind is reeling from the breast cancer diagnosis, I fear the worst. Any words of wisdom
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Natsera, Damn! What crappy news. That's awful not knowing what those spots are. You definitely don't need that along with the BC diagnosis. No words of wisdom but loads of positive vibes and support aimed your way.
HUGS!
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Hi Natsera: during my preop xray i had two spots in my lungs one on each side both in the exact same place. I then had a ct scan whconfirmed it. The dr said for the moment it is benign and yes too small for biopsy. So the recommendation was , go ahead with the lumpectomy and do some watchful monitoring. It's the waiting game all over again. My OM is monitoring it and schedule repeat ct scans after i recover from rads and the new AI. Most likely he will address it in June when I see him again. Having se from femara so I might have to change AIs. My surgeon said the spots are common and most are benign and since nothing can be done right now I need to wait and see.
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My husband had a 2cm spot on his lung discovered inadvertently via a CT scan done to check for free air in his abdomen after a botched colonoscopy perfed his bowel. (Doctor-slang for that—the spot, not the screwup—is “incidentaloma," or something unrelated they find when they're looking for something else). They didn't biopsy it, but just followed it every 6 mos. First re-scan showed it stable, same size and location. Next one showed it was gone but there was a 2mm one elsewhere. Last scan showed no spots. Most often those are granulomas or scars from some infection or inhaled allergen or irritant. Sometimes even “artifacts" (that don't exist, but something in the scanner or a tech's error results in something visible).
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tyty Sandy: for sharing, thats what the surgeon told me too - could be infection or inhaled an allergen OR tb unlikely tho will see with the next ct scan. This wait and see or let's monitor it game is the worse part of bc and now these spots
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Here in the Midwest, airborne mold & tree pollen season has started a month early, and docs are reporting people complaining of grit in their eyes and feelings of stuff stuck in their throats. Both turned out to be tree pollen, which grains are larger than those of grasses or weeds. We're even getting moss growing on tree trunks, which usually doesn't happen around here till April. And they're seeing more tiny spots in lung CTs as well. Not sure if you have any of the same deciduous trees out in Hawaii, and it's always warm, but...
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Congrats Caligirl! I am at 28 of 33; one more week to go. I will now get 5 boost tx and I am thankful my under arm and under boob and get a rest! I see the light at the end of the tunnel!
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Cali, congrats on finishing rads!! Woohoo!
Vargadoll, glad your surgery is over and you got through okay!
Taco, I'm glad you are getting the herceptin for your HER2+. You'll make it through the chemo! Right now I'm getting over the first cold I've had in years, and a few of the days last week were worse than any days of my chemo!
Hugs to everyone - hope your days are rewarding even if challenging.
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Hi Sandy: there are tons of pollens and allergens in Hawaii (year round). Worse in the summer when all the friut trees have flowers. I am also asthmatic and have lung problems all my life. So I am pretty sure I have alot of "stuff in my lungs". Hopefully my scan in 4 months will show no changes. Thank you for sharing YOU have a wealth of knowledge and I am so happy that you share it with is
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So now that chemo is done, still getting Herceptin every 3 weeks, and get my rad tattoos on 2/21...I'm beginning to wonder when/who checks my boobs? Shouldn't I be having a breast check with someone if my lx surgery was in August? Is it my GYN or my BS? What sort of checks/tests should I be doing
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I had surgery in late August too. I went for a follow up with my surgeon before Christmas. He sees me again in 3 months.
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