New Concerns?

jamilli said:

Hi Kathy
I too have not been in touch. A combination of denial and Christmas. One of the reasons I didn't join a support group is because I do not want to hear the horror stories. I was given a 98% survival rate in 5 years. I was in denial of this and I still am. I truly believe that some cancer spread somewhere and they are not going to catch it because I am at such a low risk.

So, you are lucky that you have such an amazing oncologist who may be overtreating/overtesting you. You are lucky to be in such a vigilant environment. You want them to catch something early so they can nip it in the bud. In my situation they would never order a cat scan on anything except my (hopefully) noncancer breast side.

You have such an excellent chance of survival because if something is going on, they will catch it early. A lot of the statistics are based on people who are not in your position to receive early detection procedures.

Please do your best to get past this worry that you have. It is eating you up. This is the card that was dealt you and believe it or not but you are one of the lucky ones. Breast cancer is a big part of your life, try to make friends with it, work with it. I know you can do it.

I think I may have gotten over the doctors missing something about my "good diagnosis".
But this won't stop me from asking my oncologist to scan my entire body!!!

Good luck, be strong, do what you need to do, live and be happy.
Jamilli

Thank You all for responding to me.

I really did manage to forget(ho, ho, ho, read that as denial) about these things until the day after Christmas. And, I am believing you gal's.

I did do tamoxifen for 5 yrs. Lesley, and that was 9 yrs. aqgo. She would have said something if she thought it was related to that and/or the arimidex I took or the aromasin I'm on now, I think. I have to have a cat scan every 6 mos. for her to keep an eye on a cyst/lesion she discovered on my liver 3 yrs. ago.

I guess I wrote about this to help put it somewhere and then go back to some denial, great place, and also to be a part of everyone here again, since I'd been away from y'all.

I couldn't agree more jamilli, I love my Onc. Two yrs. before my second breast removal, she started me having breast MRI'S and when something showed up, 2 small masses, my other dr.'s(surgeon and radiologist) were making fun of her to me, that MRI's cause more worry due to false positives. My breast surgeon didn't believe I could feel the pain of the cancer, when pressed on. The radiologist said I was fine, my mammogram showed nothing, so the MRI was wrong, when I showed him where the pain was it turned out not to be where the MRI showed the masses. He(a private radiologist) tracked down the radiologist there and then at Sloan-Kettering and it turned out the MRI was written up wrong and the masses were exactly where my pain was, he did about 10 needle biopsies and said he didn't know if he was in the right place, but I told him he was, because I could feel the pain when he hit the right spot. Two days later he called me and told me they were malignant. So do I do whatever she tells me, YES.

I am being treated at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, a teaching hospital as well. I am so fortunate to be able to be there, living in a suburb of NYC. But you still must be your own best advocate. It's not eating me up, truly I just wanted to get it off my chest, I haven't even told my husband, why worry him when it will be most likely nothing and honestly I have made friends w/it.

I don't know, maybe you'd be interested in checking on your remaining breast with MRI'S. I think I might have had some minor calcifications there, hence her decision to do the MRI's. Yes, I am definitely into overkill right along with dear Dr. Teresa Gilewski.(my Terri)

Again and again, Thank You all for your encouraging support. The thing I want most Huggs and good thoughts and you have all sent me that.

Love and Huuuugggggs for all of us.