Had TAH 3 weeks ago for stage 1B grade 2 Endo cancer

Denise66 said:

Where did you have your

Where did you have your second opinion on your path tissue? Also, I don't understand how you received different results.  Is this a common occurrence?

 

Did your treatment change as a result of the different stage?

 Congratulations on your 1 year mark!  

Thanks so much for responding.  

I had my second opinion at MD Anderson, which is about three hours from me (I live in San Antonio.)  The slides from my surgery were sent to MDAnderson, and their pathologists read them.  I think this was a good example to me that sometimes medicine is just as much art as science.  Two different people saw two different things while looking at the same tissues.  The MD Anderson folks saw cancer on the outside of the uterus and in one of the tubes, which was not picked up here at our military hospital.  Both pathologists here and there agreed on myometrial invasion (less than 50% but barely), both agreed on LVSI and positive pelvic wash, and both agreed that there were fragments of endometrioid endometrial adenocarcinoma with no clear margins in my cul-de-sac.  MD Anderson graded the tumor as a 2, home graded it a 1.  My surgeon here still believes I am a Stage IIIA because the mets to the cul-de-sac she says are part of the pelvis.  MD Anderson considers them distant mets.  The treatment plan was the same - 6 rounds of chemo.  My surgeon here wanted me to do 25 rounds of pelvic radiation and 5 rounds of brachytherapy.  MD Anderson was split on whether to do radiation, and their chief recommended we reserve it for recurrence, as there was nothing visible to aim at after chemo and we would have been doing a preventive dose rather than a treatment dose.  So I finished chemo October 2, 2017, and will have my one-year scan later this month.  I don't know how common it is to get varying reports, but in the end it didn't matter since treatment was the same.  I would prefer to claim the Stage IIIA, Grade 1 prognosis because it sure is a lot better than the Stage IVB, Grade 2 - but all my reports have been changed to reflect the second one.  In the end, it's classified as advanced stage and I am just not going to dwell on that until I have to.