Cancer Characteristics

For those who are curious, here are the characteristics of my cancer:

ER positive: The tumor has estrogen receptors. This is good news. My cancer will be responsive to tamoxifen, a standard chemotherapeutic regimen for breast cancer that blocks these receptors to halt tumor growth.
PR negative: Neutral news. As long as the tumor is ER positive, it's okay to be progesterone-receptor negative.
HER2 negative: Good news. Herceptin-positive tumors are very aggressive.

BRCA1/2 negative: Certain alternations to the BRCA genes are associated with a high risk of breast cancer and are often seen in younger women diagnosed with breast cancer. These were not found in my biopsy. This is good news for my 4 sisters.

Tumor size 8 mm: This is good news. The small size (less than 1 centimeter) indicates that the cancer was caught early.
Tumor grade 3: This is bad news. The cancer is aggressive.
Tumor stage IA: This is good news. The cancer was caught early.

4 sentinel lymph nodes removed: All were negative for metastasis, indicating that the cancer has not spread. VERY good news!

Oncotype DX: Breast cancer recurrence score of 30, which corresponds to a 20% likelihood of distant recurrence ('distant' means occurring elsewhere in my body). This high risk of recurrence makes me a good candidate for preventative chemotherapy.