hi all,
I was diagnosed with secondaries today, bone, lungs and liver clear so far. Of course I have no idea about treatments but I was wondering if anyone with bone cancer could share what the initial tests might be. I’ve had ct and xrays so far, worried in case they want to stick needles in my spine. God I hate needles!!!
Angie
Hi Angie
So sorry you have to join us but we are a friendly and well informed bunch of ladies who are happy to share our experiences.
If bone mets have been shown on a CT scan it is most likely the only other scan or test they will do is a bone scan just to confirm. There are not many cases where a bone biopsy has been done, although it’s not impossible that it will be suggested if yoiur oncologist wants to check receptor status. It will normally be assumed that the secondaries are the same receptor status as your primary so treatment will follow the same path. In general you should be offered a bone strengthening treatment, the current most used one is Denosumab which is a subcutaneous injection every 4 weeks or so. It is usually given in the stomach but can be given in the arm or presumably the thigh. As to the next step with treatment it will all be down to the receptor status of your secondaries/primary. If you are HER2+ you will have treatment based around that, if you are hormone positive your treatment will follow that path. It is difficult to say which without knowing more.
I think all of us have felt more able to cope once we have a treatment plan in place but do give yourself time to adjust, its a huge shock - as all of us SBC ladies know!
There is a very popular and well used thread on here called’ Bone mets please join in’ and most of us tend to post on there whether we have bone mets or other mets. We share knowledge and experiences and it really has helped so many of us to do so. There are also specific treatment threads that you may want to join to share things like dealing with side effects (SEs) for the type of treatment you will be on. To ‘join’ a thread just be logged in and hit the ‘reply’ button on the last post and your post will be tagged onto the thread, you don’t have to be replying as such to the last post.
Main advice at the moment though is do not do a general internet search on ‘Bone Mets’. Unfortunately Mr Google is very outdated and very scary!
Nicky x