Nurses....What does this mean??

My mom has invasive ductal carcinoma. She has already had the lumpectomy and had the lymphnodes removed that they wanted to check. They initially said the day of the surgery that the lymphnodes looked fine and they were negative for cancer, but when she went to her follow up appt a couple of weeks later, they told her that one of the lymphnodes showed cancer cells (they told her there were 10 different kind of cells??) and now she has an appt with an oncologist on the 30th. I didn't get to go to this last appt and my mom didn't ask many questions and I'm just trying to figure out what this news means. Any help would be greatly appreciated. This is all new to us, she was just diagnosed about a month ago.

What they do on the day of surgery is do a visual inspection of the nodes and do a quick study called frozen sections. This has to be quick since it has to be done before the operation is over, and the results are mainly used as a guide for the surgeon. Later on they do a more extensive study of the nodes removed. I'm guessing that they missed something in the fozen sections but later saw it in the more extensive study. I hope this helps a little bit. I'm sorry to hear about your mom and I hope she makes a complete recovery.

A breast cancer that has spread to the nodes is a bit more of a threat to long-term survival than a cancer that has not. But it sounds like this is an early cancer still.

What it means is that the doctor will likely recommend more aggressive therapy than s/he would have if the cancer were confined to the breast: most likely to include chemotherapy to kill any cancer cells that might be looking for a new home outside the breast.