I still wanted to feel young and sexy, and as a large-chested woman, it was difficult to suddenly become completely flat. After chemotherapy, inflammatory breast cancer patients typically undergo a mastectomy, a surgery that removes all of the cancerous tissue involved. If any of the changes above last longer than a week, tell your health care provider. Because MD Anderson has one of the only inflammatory breast cancer clinics in the country. It was worth renting an apartment in Houston and being separated from my family for months on end. Then came the words: clear margins. Dr. Teshome called me personally to deliver the news. The role of inflammation in inflammatory breast cancer. Having lost her mother to the same diagnosis, she But my doctor assured me that treatment options were always improving, and we got started right away. It was on the same side as my inflamed breast. Manage your account, Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams and Wilkins, 2004. I know that my care team had many, many patients, but they always made me feel like I was the only one. To take care of them, I put my needs last. 07-6215. Hance KW, Anderson WF, Devesa SS, Young HA, Levine PH. Dr. Valero knew I was anxious about my lab results. I was growing exasperated with the situation and the discomfort and my OBGYN was growing frustrated from my phone calls. In some cases, the nipple flattens first and is then inverted after a month interval. Minimum criteria for a diagnosis of inflammatory breast cancer include the following: Further examination of tissue from the affected breast should include testing to see if the cancer cells have hormone receptors (estrogen and progesterone receptors) or if they have greater than normal amounts of the HER2 gene and/or the HER2 protein (HER2-positive breast cancer). My cancer was incurable. Because I was only 30 years old and had no family history, my insurance made it difficult for me to proceed with the tests. Id always thought of my 30s as my time. Many factors can influence a cancer patients prognosis, including the type and location of the cancer, the stage of the disease, the patients age and overall general health, and the extent to which the patients disease responds to treatment.
