Just read this interesting article from the New York Times about wrong diagnosis of ductal carcinoma in situ, the earliest form of breast cancer. What I found most haunting - besides women being told they had cancer when they didn't, and the need for a second opinion - is that the abnormal cells in ductal carcinoma, which is diagnosed in more than 50 000 women a year in the US alone, are "removed before they develop into invasive cancer. There are estimates that if left untreated, it will turn into invasive cancer 30 percent of the time, though it could take decades in some cases."
So one wonders about that too. About the need for surgery in such cases.
I live in Johannesburg, South Africa, where I was diagnosed with breast cancer on Thursday January 15 2009. This is my journey with cancer and other musings as surveyed - initially temporarily hairless - from under my hats.
Unfortunately, right now we don't have any way to determine which cancers would spread & which wouldn't. It's so hard making sense of statistics like this because all of those numbers are actual people. I'm one of the cases of people who would certainly be dead now without surgery. DCIS was all that showed on all of my scans & biopsies. When they did the surgery, they found 2 highly aggressive, invasive tumors & most of lymph nodes were pos. I just wish we had some reliable way to know - some day....
ReplyDeleteYou are so right. Those numbers are actual people - and look at your case and how well you are today.
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