Our Breast Cancer Story - Part 2

That’s what it said on the Pathology report. The size of the tumor was indicated as 1.2 cm.

It also said that the ER and PR were negative. Initially, I was relieved, because the little I knew about medical terms was, that whenever it says “negative” that actually means that it is good thing usually. Like being “HIV negative”, for instance. 

There more surprised I was, of course, as I started googeling just to learn that ER (Estrogen Hormone Receptor Status) and PR (Progesterone Hormone Receptor Status) being negative is actually lesser of a desired prognosis, because it limits the choices of available breast cancer treatment options. That scared the hell out of me, of course. But that was just the beginning. I then started to look up ‘Poorly’, ‘Differentiated’ and ‘Infiltrated’. Well, in case you do it (or maybe you already did) yourself, don’t be surprised and I hope you are seated. I could barely hold myself together and I told my wife, who had not read the report yet, that we need to wait until we speak to an Oncologist. But inside me I was horribly scared, I felt sick to my stomach.

Well, the internet is a blessing and a curse at the same time, and here is why I think why: Isn't fantastic that we can, within a few clicks, get access to an abundance of information about virtually everything on the world wide web? I love it! It used to take me hours, sometimes even days or weeks to obtain a single piece of information. Now I just go online, and there it is. But the problem is, a lot of the information that is being output by Google or any other search engine, quite often is not appropriately prepared in order to thoroughly address your query. As we all know, when it gets a little nitty-gritty, we need to refine our search, add or scratch a few words, etc. to really get to what we were looking for. That gets especially tricky when we don’t know the subject of our investigation well enough. And for most of us, I may speculate at this point, the subject of ‘Cancer’ is rather unfamiliar territory. Yet, it is such a popular topic, that the electronic information available to us is simply overwhelming. So to keep it very simple here: in order to get the facts together, we do need help. Period. Your wife’s (or your daughter’s, sister, Mom’s etc.,) breast-cancer is not like a lawnmower that just gave up on you and now just needs a little bit of work and repair – and since you might not be an expert in that area, this time it’s simply not enough just by consult “Dr. Youtube” or “Prof. Google” and make up for your lack of knowledge.