It’s shocking to be diagnosed with breast cancer, but it’s even more shocking to learn about the details of breast cancer.
When I first heard about my diagnosis I thought ok no problem I can deal with this.
Then I learn’t about how complex breast cancer is!
I will break it down as simple as possible.
A women with breast cancer could have any of the following 4 main types:
- Ductual
- Lobular
- Combination of lobular and ductual
- Inflammatory.
These basically are referring to which part of the anatomy of the breast the cancer has developed. Each type has a completely different DNA composition. The most common being ductual affecting 90% of women.
Some women may also have DCIS or LCIS and this is noted as breast cancer in its infancy:”in situ”.
On top of that there are 8 different possible combinations for each type of breast cancer.
This translates into 32 different breast cancers essentially, as all are not treated the same.
For example, someone with ductual cancer could have these 8 possible combinations:
- Triple positive (ER+, PR+, HER+)
- Triple negative (ER-, PR-, HER-)
- Estrogen positive (ER+) only
- Progesterone positive (PR+) only
- Human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 positive (HER2+) only
- Both ER+ and PR+
- PR+ and HER2+
- ER+ and HER2+
This is just a heads up! Next I will cover what each one means and how treatment differs.