Just to chime in with little more info.

Pathology reports (what they use to help indentify a disease) test cancer for responsiveness to 3 things currently. By responsiveness I mean, they are trying to determine what is "feeding" the cancer or what causes it to grow.

So they test for hormone receptiveness, for both estrogen and progesterone. Do those hormones cause the cancer to grow? If yes, they are either ER+ or PR+ or both. There are varying degrees of positive here too, so you may hear people talk about % positive for hormones.

The other thing they test for her HER2, which is a protein produced by your body. They want to see if your cancer is fueled by HER2 protein. If it is, you are HER2+.

So what does this actually MEAN. It helps determine your course of treatment. So you are triple negative. In the most basic terms, they do not know what causes your cancer to grow. They know that it's NOT hormones or HER2. But what it really means is that there is no longer term therapy/treatment that will help cut recurrance rates.

HER2+ people will get Herceptin for a year. Hormone positive ladies will generally get Tamoxifen, which is a hormone blocker, for 5 years. But triple negative girls just do chemo and surgery and that is it.

Sounds kind of scary, right? The "upside" of being triple negative is that it usually responds strongly to chemo, which is great. It also reacts strongly to changes in diet and exercise and the impact on your recurrance rates. So if you eat healthy and exercise regularly, you can cut your risk of recurrance by up to half. So YOU have some influence over your risk of recurrance, which is very empowering.

But basically what it means to the doctors is that it will help them determine your treatment. Since it is aggressive, you will be talking to them about surgery and chemo. Followed up with radiation if you got a lumpectomy.

I hope that helps.

@A MyBCTeam Member I couldn't find anything about 10cm, just above 5cm. But size doesn’t tell the whole story. All of the cancer’s characteristics are important. A small cancer can be aggressive while a larger cancer is not — or it could be the other way around.

Congratulations on the shrinkage!! That is the best news! You know the chemo is working!!!! I had chemo before surgery also. It made going to chemo easier because I knew I was going to see some results. After 3 months of chemo they couldn't find any sign of cancer, but of course I had to continue chemo another 8 weeks to make sure they got everything.

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A MyBCTea...

Here is a great website that talks about stages/grades
http://www.breastcancer.org/symptoms/diagnosis/...

I was stage 2 because my cancer was larger than 2cm but smaller than 5cm, but had spread to one axillary lymph node.

Grade is a “score” that tells you how different the cancer cells’ appearance and growth patterns are from those of normal, healthy breast cells. 1-3

I was a grade 3 because it was an aggressive type of cancer.

Check out the website, great info!!

@A MyBCTeam Member: very well written. Wish I'd had the nutrition info 12 years ago when I finished my first round of treatments.

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A MyBCTea...

i hav a question.., my partner was just recently diagnosed with "triple negative breast cancer" luckily not spread to lymph node or anywhere else.., , she said she did not want to know a stage or any of that stuff., they said they were going to start with 6 months of chemo, the first 4 treatments are once every other week, then once a week for a total of 6 months., then they will talk about surgery.., she has had 3 treatments soo far, they had said hers was 10 cm. the day before her first chemo, and they then measured it after and it is now between 6 and 7 cm's supposedly., it HAS REALLY VISIBLY GONE DOWN AND IMPROVED! ITS CRAZY! but my question is., wht does stage has to do with size? cause i have not seen anything well everywher i look says less than 1 or 2 cm, 3-5 cm, 5 or more.., i havent ever seen anything about 10?.., specificallly..., i just wana know more about cuz i feel like i NEED to know more specific details about her exact condition or place in this if that makes sense in order to mentally be there for her in the ways SHE needs me to..?