Thursday, February 21, 2008

Diagnosis summary

As the diagnosis is ongoing I'll use this space to give a summary of known diagnostics.

Diagnosis (from original 2/12 biopsy):
"Invasive poorly differentiated ductal carninoma with extensive necrosis"
Medical to English translation of this, as best as I know it, is:
Invasive = it's cancer
Poorly differentiated = cells are very different from normal cells (this is bad)
Ductal = in the ducts
Carcinoma = a tumor
Extensive necrosis = it's big

Stage:
Stage 2, due to tumor size. Dimensions, based on ultrasound, is 3.3 cm x 2.5 cm x 1.8 cm. No spread to elsewhere in the body. (No lymph node involvement, no metastasis)

Hormone receptors:
All negative. (ER negative, PR negative, HER-2/neu negative)

Here are some explanatory comments on this stuff helpfully emailed by my friend Kathleen, M.D.:
"If the biopsy were HER-2/neu positive, the cancer cells would carry a gene that makes it faster growing with more resistance to chemotherapy and more likely to recur. That's great that it's negative. If the tumor were positive for being hormone-receptive, you might be able to take medicines to help stop it, but you also might have to go into premature menopause to decrease estrogen production. I think hot flashes at our age would irritating.
"Also I was reading up more on the grade - poorly-differentiated, and while that is not great in some ways, it does mean that the tumor might be more affected by radiation or chemo because it is growing quickly. The reason some people get mouth sores or lose hair with chemo is because those are fast-growing cells, so they are the first to go. This can be true with poorly-differentiated tumors too."


Background Info:
I am 36 years old and there is no history of breast cancer in my family.

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