You are in a race. Basically nobody dies of cancer in their breasts. After all, breasts can be removed and women survive. But breast cancer often spreads. Typically it moves through the lymph system and takes root in lymph nodes under the armpit or throughout the chest, neck or abdomen. It can also move to the lungs, liver, or bones. If it gets to these points your life is significantly at risk. And it can also move to the central nervous system such as the spinal cord or the brain. If it gets there, you have little chance of survival as almost no treatments are effective in the brain or spinal cord. Virtually all chemotherapies do not traverse the blood - brain barrier. Now that you know that you have breast cancer, you must beat it before it spreads. So make haste.
Often you will hear things from doctors intended to calm you, such as "oh this tumor has probably been in you for years, growing slowly" and "a few weeks won't make a difference". I beg to differ. It is obvious that speedy treatment improves success rates. That is why screening mammography programs are improving survival. The sooner breast cancer is detected, the sooner it is treated, on average. And it cannot be assumed that breast cancer always grows slowly. In our case, I know that it grew very fast. Dulce's initial tumor went from being unnoticeable during very intimate relations to being obvious to a simple touch of the hand in only 12 days. Later when she had her recurrence, there was further evidence of rapid growth. She had a collapsed lung when she started chemotherapy the second time. The chemotherapy that she used, Taxotere, works by inhibiting the splitting of cell membranes, thus preventing them from dividing. Two weeks after starting chemotherapy, Dulce had fluid drained from her pleural space. Our oncologist commented that the pathologist had seen very strange cells in the extracted pleural fluid, some of which had as many as eight nuclei. This implies that these cancerous cells tried to split 1 to 2, 2 to 4, and 4 to 8, i.e. three times in only two weeks. This implies that Dulce's cancer was capable of doubling every week. And yours may be too.
So don't assume that you have a lot of time. Your odds get worse
with each day that passes. You need to get on with treatments as
soon as possible. Don't let anyone hold you back. And then
you can get the peace that comes from knowing that you are doing everything
possible; that you are doing your best. Kevin...