Sharlee,

I tend to agree with the point that Gary made about the value of a true "team" opinion vs. the individual phone conversations of 2 or 3 doctors. If your appointment with Dana Farber is for a team consultation, I would encourage you to go ahead with it. When there's a tough call like yours involved, I think it really makes sense to let the various specialty doctors sort out the pathology issues and come to an overall recommendation about what is best for you. After I had a consult of this kind, I didn't feel that the decision was all left on my shoulders -- the team told me definitely what their view was based on what they saw from my biopsy and all the subsequent tests.

While I had clean margins and no lymph node involvement, there was clearly something in my pathology reports (probably the poorly differentiated part) that caused them to push me toward radiation after surgery, which I haven't regretted.

Cathy