Skin biopsy

I am scheduled to have a biopsy this morning on a weird blister that popped up on my chest last week. Actually, there were at least 5 lesions, two were clear liquid blisters and the others were hard and pink. They were in a line towards where the bottom of my bra/prosthesis were. At first I thought it was an irritation of some sort but that wouldn't have been in a near-straight line (as opposed to curved) and wouldn't have been separate bumps. Of course my fearful imagination initially thought of something possibly cancer related. I had my husband take a photo of it. He also took video--just in case it was something that progressed a certain way and needed following.
I had noticed it just before I undressed and went to bed. Soon after I got into bed the thought of possible shingles popped into mind. However, I would think from what I knew that shingles were painful. Over the past month I did have some discomfort in that area which included burning pain and itching. I had thought back to my initial discovery of the breast cancer which involved pain in that area of my chest but forgot to mention it to my oncologist and surgeon when I had seen them.
Anyway, they were still there the following morning when I awoke. I didn't think it would be a great idea to wear my regular prostheses against them, so I put them into a pocketed sports bra. My daughter who just graduated from college out-of-state had come in for the weekend. We were making a party for her. In addition when she returns to where she is living she will be a nanny for a newborn who was just adopted. She never had chicken pox although she did have the vaccine 16 years ago in an experimental program. I was concerned that if I had shingles that I might need to take some precaution and thought I had better check it out.
I put a call into my surgeon. She called me back and said it sounded like shingles except for the lack of pain. I asked her if that area was somewhat numb and that some nerves?) had been cut, could that lessen or mask any possible pain. She never thought of that but said that was a possibility.
She said if it didn't clear up then I should call her. I was able to get an appt. in internal medicine (with someone whom I'd never seen--which was fine for this). Much to my surprise when I showed him the area which I hadn't seen since the morning it looked very different. There was one large, fluid-filled blister but the second blister wasn't there and the other bumps were gone.
After my description of it he said it sounded like shingles but didn't want to treat only one. I agreed. If I hadn't had the photos it would have been hard to believe that they had been as I had described.
Meanwhile, my curiosit got the better of me over the weekend. I looked up breast cancer, shingles, skin metastases and came to learn that there is a type of skin metastases called zosteriform that resembles shingles. I was a bit 'freaked' when I further read that that should be considered if it appears in linear form in the chest area of malignant side. Great (not!). I had been hoping it WAS shingles--something 'normal' that I could relax and not worry about it being cancer-related--at least for a short while anyway.
My fears I think are reality-based because I did have dermal lymphatic invasion (inflammatory breast cancer), although I did have a rarer presentation.
However, I am still getting red patches over my back on malignant side and they (oncologist and surgeon) are monitoring.
Anyway, I emailed an article or two about this type of skin mets to my surgeon on Saturday and forgot about it. I was surprised when I received a call from her nurse on Tuesday morning (for those not in the states, Monday was a national holiday) saying that she wanted me to have a biopsy of that single lesion. I am guessing she is doing it to be on the safe side. It has been there for about a week now.
I am also guessing (hoping) that it isn't going to show anything. I would be more concerned if there were still 5 or 6 there. It was weird, though, how one of the blisters just disappeared as if it had never been there. If we hadn't taken a good picture it would have been hard to believe they had all been there. I wasn't as surprised that the other separate hard red bumps disappeared so quickly--it was one of the blisters that was completely gone.
It had been there before I went to bed and they were all the same at 7:00 in the morning. Except for the larger (about 1/8 in circumference) remaining blister all the others were gone by 5:00 that afternoon.

<< glad to see that you had it biopsy --wishing you quick and neg. results. >>

Thanks, but when I saw her she said that it would be hard to biopsy since it was fluid-filled rather than a lump. I am confused because I have read elsewhere that something like this could be biopsied. She referred me to the dermatologist to have it checked.

<< Any chance that it could be an allergic reaction of some sort? >>
At first I thought it might be an irritation, even an allergic reaction to the prostheses. However, if that were the case it would have been more widespread rather than along a single line. I haven't changed anything re. soaps, fabrics. The initial reaction was under the area of the prostheses.
Any thoughts of possible malignancy were reinforced by the following:
Zosteriform Metastatic Skin Cancer: Report of Three Cases and Review of the
Y. Kikuchi, A. Matsuyama, K. Nomura
Department of Dermatology, Aomori Prefectural Central Hospital, Aomori, Japan
Vol. 202, No. 4, 2001 
Free Abstract  
Case Report
Zosteriform Metastatic Skin Cancer: Report of Three Cases and Review of the
Y. Kikuchi, A. Matsuyama, K. Nomura
Department of Dermatology, Aomori Prefectural Central Hospital, Aomori, Japan
Address of Corresponding Author
Dermatology 2001;202:336-338 (DOI: 10.1159/000051670)

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What you say is quite true. However, at time of my dx my tumor markers were elevated. At that time I wondered why tumor markers weren't used to dx breast cancer. I didn't realize that once tumor markers are elevated that there is systemic disease going on and that the cancer was more advanced.
I would be less concerned if I had run-of-the mill breast cancer rather than at least 2 of the 3 types I had.
Common sense and correspondence with others with similar symptoms suggest to me that something has been going on. At the same time, the addition of 'alternative' medications--which have some valid research backing--suggests that these treatments may have had the/a desired impact. Both my regullar oncologists believe that to be the case

every day, excerise and able to access the computer, you function at a very high level >>

I work 3 days/week by choice but may try and go back full time--because of potential retirement benefits should I be a long-term survivor.

<< As hard as you try there is no blatantly evidence of met disease that is confirmed by an oncologist. >>

I am not so sure of that with the on-going left shoulder, upper arm, and surrounding area pain with possibie enlarged nodes. That pain started 10 months ago. I have pain in my right hip and also pelvic bone and along the groin. I have pain in right upper arm with increased lymphedema swelling--despite regular treatments and bandaging.
I have now developed another bout of dizziness. I had the Epley procedure.
This time it didn't help fully. I have a headache in the back of my head above the neck with a feeling of numbness, tingling along spine. I have shortness of breath--slight--with exhalation. And most recently I have had weird skin stuff going on.
True, my tumor markers have been normal. However, one time when my onc bopped into the room and told me my markers were normal, I handed him a print out of alkaline phosphatase readings. At that point it had made the largest jump since dx'd almost 22 mos. before. It had gone up 20 pts and only was a couple of pts. below normal. With tumor markers one looks for steady increase which is what it had been doing.
My 2nd opinion onc said that people talk of cancer "coming back." He went on to say, where does it come back from--the pathology lab? In other words, the cancer if it shows up in recurrence for was always there.

markers--only symptoms and wants to know all changes, even those that are slight. Another gal on that group was told her markers were normal last
January. She felt fine. In March she had a skin recurrence. 5 weeks later she was dead. That scenario is quite atypical for most cancers--but not unusual for IBC or other pleomorphic variant.
Sometimes the only way to dx bone mets is through a bone marrow biopsy. Latest research reports that would be quite useful or helpful to better treat.
However, the NCI has not adopted that as standard practice, and it usually is not done.

I was clearly told when I was diagnosed that breast cancer is a systemic disease that often it lays dormant for long periods of time and then reappears.
I was also told being node positive or node negative is not a exact science, that some women with small non invasive tumors die quickly from time of diagnosis and people with many nodes positve live full lives, there is no reliable test to know how people will respond after intial therapy. You ar have many symptoms, but some if not all may not be cancer related, in fact the further you are away from your initial diagnosis the symptoms are less likely cancer related.Cancer pian is gets steadliy worse progressily not make you able to function. It sounds like you need a good physical exam by an internal medicine doc, who can help sort out many of your concerns. You have a daughter in medical school, she should be able to get the name of a doctor who can sort through these issues..

sweat and get hives from it. It only happens if I have a temperature over 103 or if I exercise too much and am dripping with sweat, but I do get itchy after about ten minutes on the treadmill. And before my lumpectomy I got hives all over my chest from the 8 or 9 mammograms I had to have for them to do the needle biopsy. >>

It wasn't that itchy. In fact if anything there was a mild burning. However, that side of my chest has had some discomfort and internal itching over the past several weeks. These lesions, however, were not that uncomfortable--if anything there was a slight or mild discomfort in that area. I was very surprised that they were even there.

of one of my long-term-use products had changed, and/or I had developed a new allergy to it.
I know one can develop a hypersensitivity to things like latex. I am not sure what the prostheses backing is made of. However, what appeared was not typical for an allergic reaction---or most of it wasn't anyway. I still have one of the fluid filled lesions--although it is much less fluidy than it was 8 days ago. Until the time they appeared the only thing against that area was the prosthesis. However, the lesions were toward the bottome (as opposed to near mastectomy scar) and were in a horizontal line (bra is circular at that point)<>
Thanks for sharing. It's good to hear positive, success stories. Generally, lobular is less aggressive and in most circumstances has at least a slightly more positive prognosis than ductal. However, the type of lobular I had was pleomorphic--a rare, aggressive variant with a relatively short relapse free survival time. I am hoping, though, that the Herceptin and other things I've done may have the propensity to make the cancer less aggressive.