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So now what?  Picked up The New York Times this morning to learn that the condition for which I had radiation and disfiguring surgery was not really cancer, after all. Say what?  Doctors for many years have been treating ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), which I had, as cancer, but it turns out, as I have slowly learned, that it is not cancer at all but simply a risk factor for the disease.  I met with my oncologist (do I even need one now?) last week for my annual check-up and he was adamant that DCIS required aggressive treatment because in 25% of cases, it turned into invasive cancer. "I have women who say, but 75% of us won't get it," he told me, "but that's one in four," seeming to imply that even that is too high. Now, in my case, there may have been more reason to treat DCIS like a true cancer because mine was the highest grade of noninvasive cancer, and pathologists were divided on whether it already actually was a cancer.  Then, two years late...

The guessing game is over.  In May researchers discovered 12  genes  that, when expressed, can predict fairly accurately the chances of a recurrence for woman already diagnosed with ductal cell carcinoma (DCIS), or non-invasive breast cancer eliminating treatment that may not be necessary. I wish this had been around when I was diagnosed with the disease.  Instead, I had radiation but was ultimately forced to have the major surgery most women dread, anyway.  I did have a recurrence, which is what led to the surgery, but  looking back, doctors think the cancer cells were there all along, just not thought to be significant.  Scary. Had these additional cells been spotted with my first bunch of abnormal cells, I most likely would have immediately been faced with a mastectomy, but I would have avoided six weeks of radiation that can cause cancer in the future, and which pretty much ruined my reconstruction. Radiation stretches and tightens the skin and...