Technical information

For those of you who are curious about what kind of cancer, here is some technical information as I first received it on February 9th.

Left breast:
Invasive ductal carcinoma, 2.4 cm mass.
Grade 2 (for how closely the breast cancer cells look like normal tissue; 1 is low grade or well-differentiated, grade 2 is intermediate or moderately differentiated, grade 3 is high grade or poorly differentated).
Hormone receptor status=both positive. Here they look at whether the cancer is growing from estrogen and/or progesterone. I was positive for both which will mean I will likely take an aromatase inhibitor. Aromatase inhibitors are medications that stop the production of estrogen in postmenopausal women.
Her2/neu=negative (the gene that controls and regulates the growth, division and repair of a cell. This is a good indicator if you'll need chemo or not. Negative is a good result!
Ki-67=5 (this is how fast the cancer is growing. They rate it from 1 to 100. I got a 5! VERY slow growing!

Right breast:
Invasive pleomorphic lobular carcinoma, larger mass is 1.8 cm.
Grade 2 (for how closely the breast cancer cells look like normal tissue; 1 is low grade or well-differentiated, grade 2 is intermediate or moderately differentiated, grade 3 is high grade or poorly differentated).
Hormone receptor status=estrogen is positive, progesterone is negative.
Her2/neu=inconclusive. It is being sent out for a different kind of test.
Ki-67 is also a 5 (this is how fast the cancer is growing. They rate it from 1 to 100. I got a 5! VERY slow growing!

Basically, we caught it early and it grows so slowly. But as you know from another post, the MRI found an additional mass (4cm) in the right breast, and the left side is larger than they thought (a little over 3 cm rather than 2.4) as well as weird-looking tissue at the bottoms of both breasts. So more testing tomorrow!