laurarose's Journey with Breast Cancer

Routine mammogram found 4 tumors, one with DCIS and one with invasive breast cancer

First surgeon suggested an aggressive lumpectomy. Second suggested a bilateral mastectomy

I fainted when they injected the dye through my nipple (with what looked like an 8 inch needle!) I developed a postop cellulites at the sentinal node biopsy site

I had a bilateral mastectomy with DIEP reconstruction. The surgeon and hospital stay were wonderful and I had VNA at home. I had the nipple sparing surgery and one of the nipples was slow to heal, but it did finally heal!! The recovery from DIEP takes awhile but it was the right surgery for me and the outcome looks excellent (also a lovely flat abdomen!!)

My oncotype was 28, which was on the high end of intermediate recurrence risk. The oncologist recommended 3 months of AC and 3 months of Taxol. Six months just sounded too long to me, so initially I just commited to the 3 months of AC

I had 4 treatments of AC every 3 weeks. They left me feeling weak and tired, but the medications for preventing nausea worked very well

I've developed very bad hot flashes. I was having over 20/day, so we decided to try some drug therapy to help reduce them before starting Tamoxifen. I already take meds for depression and high blood pressure, so my PCP decided we should try Neurontin. It seems to be helping slightly (hot flashes are now about 15/day) and we've increaseed the dose twice. It seems like a silly side effect to complain about, but I'm concerned that since Tamoxifen can increase hot flashes I couldn't tolerate them being much worse!!

After finishing the AC I decided to try the Taxol. I had weekly influsions for 12 weeks. I kept thinking that if the side effects (peripheral neuropathy) were too much I would quit, but I actually tolerated it very well