Hello lovely ladies,
I was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer with four lymph nodes involved in January 2012. I thought I was going to celebrate ten years cancer free this month- and then today happened.
I have been getting leg pain for the past year. I mentioned it to my oncologist back in May and he did some blood tests that came back normal. He did a physical exam and couldn’t feel anything untoward. He said to contact him again if pain got worse. I asked my GP for an X-ray of my spine because of lower back pain. This came back as showing degeneration of the discs (wear and tear basically) and actually stated that there was no sign of any metastatic disease. The pain continued so I got referred to an orthopaedic surgeon. He thought I might have a trapped nerve. He asked for an MRI to be done and this happened in earlyNovember. I wasn’t able to get an appointment with him to get the results until today. He had literally only seen the scan five minutes before I went in. Thinking it was a trapped nerve I didn’t ask my husband to come with me. The consultant then said that there was no trapped nerve but that some of the spinal disks looked black and opaque on the scan whereas the normal ones looked translucent. Basically, he thinks the cancer is back in my bones.
I’m absolutely terrified. My head feels like it’s going to explode. I’m angry at myself for not pressing my oncologist for a scan and convincing myself it was a trapped nerve. I’m also gutted that two months have elapsed when I could have found out what I’m dealing with and started treatment of needs be. I’m not bricking it in case it’s spread everywhere. I’ve got two kids- 18 and 20 and am 54. I be decided not to tell them anything until I get a firm diagnosis.
sorry this is so long, but somehow writing it down gives me some relief and 8 can’t get to sleep anyway. It all feels so surreal.
mateface67