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Posted by Jefner on September 22, 2009, 2:34 am, in reply to "Newbie"
Hi Patricia - I, of course, want to welcome you to the group, and "build on" what these other great women have said so far. Since I am one of those women who choose a lumpectomy (twice actually!), I thought I'd just share a few of my thoughts, with the understanding that everyone is making really great points, and when it comes to making decisions about what surgery and/or reconstruction to have - and unfortunately when it comes to breast cancer it sometimes seems like we have such tough choices! - everyone approaches their decisions with a different list of what's "key" for them. That said, sometimes it's helpful to read how people ordered their decisions.
I totally hear you when you say you don't want the worry or stress of recurrence in the future (definitely part of my thinking too), but Penny makes the tough, but key point that no decision you make will guarantee that. Like Penny, I don't say that to be discouraging, *at all,* but just to suggest that taking off one or both breasts is not the only way to work toward your eventual health. My surgeon told me once that sometimes women who get mascectomies assume they cannot have a recurrence and so in those cases when a recurrence happens those women can be even more devastated because they thought they had insulated themselves from that possibility. In my own decision-making process I looked at it like this - I understood (and understand) why some women choose to get the mascectomy (or double mascectomy) - why that provided them some psychological relief, or as some of the women above said, allowed them to avoid the trauma of additional biopsies for unusual mammos, etc. - why that decision made sense for them.
For me, it was not that way (at least not at this point in my journey). I had a couple of predominating thoughts circulating - first, I wanted to try to minimize the number of surgeries I was going to need to have, and to choose the "simpliest" surgery that was reasonable for my situation. And, I knew that now that I'd had cancer I was going to be getting thorough follow-ups, staying on top of all tests, etc. And so if, God forbid, the cancer does return they will catch it very early and be able to treat it again. No one wants to have a recurrence, and the fact is, it can happen whether you get a lumpectomy or mascectomy - that worry plagued me for a bit when I first got diagnosed - but you start to realize that you just have to take everything one day at a time, one procedure or test at a time, one step at a time - and when you do it like that it becomes more manageable, mentally speaking. So I say, if getting a mascectomy or removing your non-affected breast is the decision you feel peaceful about, and makes you feel like you can move forward better, then that is a good reason to go that route. If not, like me, then that's o.k. too. And I'll repeat a most important point - what I heard repeated many times, from my surgeon, from friends and from other survivors - there is not a wrong decision here - both options are totally legitimate and can lead to a cancer-free outcome (as Penny said, in terms of rates of recurrence, lumpectomy + radiation and mascectomy are statistically equivalent). At the end of the day, talk to your doctor/friends/family/"yourself" and make the decision that you feel most at peace with, based on the best information you can get and the factors that are most important to you.
Please keep us posted as to your process, and of course, please keep asking questions if you have more. Lastly, hang in there, and know that we are hear pulling for you with love and support!
Jenni
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