89-year old Mum with brain metasteses

My elderly Mum has been diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer for a year in her lung and rib bones. We learned recently that the hormone tablet she’s been taking (letrozole) had stopped working and she’s been transferred onto exemestane. However that came with the news that the cancer has now spread to the membranes in her brain. 

 

She is suffering terribly with variable hearing loss; she wears hearing aids anyway but sometimes she cannot hear even with them and it’s affecting her mental health more than any other symptom she has so I’m desperate to see if there is anything I can do to help her. Doctors don’t seem to be particularly clued up or interested in this as a symptom - I know it’s not directly life-threatening as fluid build up in lungs is for example, but is a huge quality of life issue for her. Does anyone have any experience of brain metasteses dramatically affecting hearing?

 

I’d also be very grateful for any one else’s experiences of helping a very elderly person through brain metastastes - I’m not sure what to expect, or how fast things might progress, given her age. Everything I can find online seems to deal with much younger women…

Hi! 

Unfortunately I am not able to help much with your questions but I didn’t want to read and run…

my mum has been diagnosed with brain mets, she’s 56, her main symptom was speech problem (mixing up words) . I think with brain mets it’s so complex, all depends where the tumor is  localised. From what I’ve learned so far, main treatment for brain mets is usually radiotherapy , we were lucky enough for mum to have the tumor surgicaly removed, but still she will have to have whole brain radiotherapy after she recovers from surgery.I guess treatment options depend on overall health of the patient…and most of the times

it takes a while for the doctors to decide what sort of treatment to start. But I’m sure they will come up with some kind of plan. 

 

I hope you’ll get some answers soon, there’s some many amazing

women on here, with great knowledge…