Yesterday Dr. P. the surgeon called while I was out school shopping with Will. She said the final path. report from the re-excision showed “a single minute group of atypical cells consistent with ductal carcinoma,” only showing on the permanent (staining?) and not the frozen section analysis (that they did while I was in surgery).

Yeesh.

She said she’d talk with Dr. C. the oncologist on Tuesday and get back to us with what they thought should happen next. We assume this means that more surgery is not a given. What does “minute” mean? Is this classed like in the nodes, “microscopic” and “submicroscopic” with the latter kind of not counting? More to learn…

Yesterday I looked at lots of abstracts about excision/re-excision margins and their relationship to recurrence rates.

Patients with early stage invasive cancer with close or positive margins treated with conservative surgery and radiation have an increased risk of breast recurrence that is delayed by adjuvant systemic therapy.

Conservation therapy in T1-T2 breast cancer: past, current issues, and future challenges and opportunities.

And I tried to research contralateral breast cancer but the only really relevant thing I found was this: Contralateral breast cancer: clinical characteristics and impact on prognosis.