Hi Glittersgold

Sorry to hear about your mum. I was diagnosed 2 years ago with breast cancer, I had roughly 7.5cm removed from each breast and after surgery and radiotherapy I'm fine. I know any type of cancer can be scary but 1cm is tiny and treatment and survival rates have came on leaps and bounds. The survival rate for stage 1 is 99%. You obviously love your mum very much and its good that they have found the cancer early and you'll have many more years together. x

Thank you for replying- I appreciate it so much that you have given up your time to help me. I think it's the not knowing that is the worst. I am hoping the biopsy shows that the cancer is slow growing as I am quite nervous about that and also what my mum is facing in terms of treatments and recurrence of course but trying not to get ahead of myself. 
if you don't mind me asking- was your lumpectomy and radiation therapy a short term process? I am just wondering when they will complete the surgery and start the radiation. I believe she can have the lump removed via local anesthetic which I hope means it's not in her lymph nodes. 

Wasn't your mum given an ultrasound of the lymph nodes at time of breast screening? I would be surprised if she wasn't, the ultrasound will tell whether there is lymph node involvement. I'm surprised that your mum is being offered a local anaesthetic - never heard of that. Your mum will have to have radioative dye injected into her breast the day before on on the day of surgery so the surgeon can see if her lymph nodes react. Three of mine reacted and were removed but thankfully no cancer was found. I had to wait 3 months for my surgery because my dx was DCIS so those with invasive cancer got priority, I then had to have my margin widened as they found invasive so had another wait for a secong op and then it was another 2 months after that before I started radiotherapy. So from dx to radiotherapy was 10 months.

However my case is unusual and your mum should be offered surgery in the next couple of weeks and all being well with the incision, radiotherapy about 5/6 weeks later. 

Try not to get hung up on recurrence, I certainly dont spend time thinking about it. By all means be aware of the signs but your mum will want positivity around her and be allowed to get on with her life after treatment. 

Thanks again for your reply. Yes they did carry out an ultrasound on her lymph nodes and they feel at present they are unaffected so didn't take a biopsy of them. As you say they will probably be investigated at a future point. But so far it seems a good sign?
 

Yes the local anesthetic removal is a clinical trial offered but I'm not sure she'll take it. I think it's because we don't know what's going to happen next that's most concerning. 
Thank you are correct she does want positively. I need to try and pull myself together to be there for her. I know it's not my problem so I can't be the one who is upset.