Woohoo, early stage 1 and not stage 2

I saw my surgeon on Thursday. He said that I am in early stage 1 infiltrating ductal carcinoma, and not stage 2 as I thought. (self diagnosing from the pathology report)

I am having a lumpectomy with radiation instead of a mastectomy. The survival rates for the two are identical so I don't feel the need to go radical. I am having my surgery Friday and it's an outpatient surgery. I will have to do radiation, but no chemo unless the sentinel lymph node shows cancer cells. My surgeon said that it is highly unlikey that it will come back positive.

The cancer is in such an early stage that there is not a true lump formed yet. It is just an area where the tissue has started to pull inward. I am so glad that I didn't skip my mammogram this year. I was very tempted to put it off untill spring, because it is just so darned cold here in MN. I had to go in for thyrogen shots to check my thyroglobulin levels (thyroid cancer last year) so since I had to be there anyway, I went ahead and had my mammogram and yearly physical. It was tha mammogram that caught it, my doctor didn't feel anything in the breat exam. I am now an advocate of yearly checkups and mammograms.

Oh and it was the yearly checkup last year that caught the thyroid cancer. My dodcor felt a small lump in my throat that he really wasn't concerned about, but because I had excessive weight gain over a couple of months and that's why I made the appointment, he ordered an ultrasound. The ultrasound found the cancer. It was also in very early stages too. I did have to have 2 surgeries though. I had the total thyroidectomy in January2013 followed by radioavtive iodine in February, then a right neck dissection in August. So far so good on that now. My thyroglobulin levels are very low, exactly where they should be.

I am very confident that this will be my one and only surgery needed for the breast cancer.