I’m not entirely sure that this is the right sub-forum, but with apologies for this lengthy first post, here goes!
My wife was diagnosed with oestrogen positive breast cancer four years ago. She made an excellent recovery from her mastectomy, immediate LD flap reconstruction, chemo and radiotherapy, she made a rapid recovery from a hysterectomy the following year and has even weathered the intervening years on arimidex well. She is now 54 years old, has never smoked, has a BMI of 25 and normally leads an active life.
All things considered, she was doing very well indeed until last January, when she developed lower back pain and muscle spasming, both in the lumbar region and around the shoulder blade on her rearranged side. In due course, she had a bone scan which confirmed that the back problem was musculoskeletal, and she was referred to a physiotherapist. She also started going to Pilates classes in an effort to build up her back strength again.
By May we had finally realised that the back pain stemmed from the time she strained her back in the garden, and in October, with little improvement showing in her back, she finally qualified for an MRI, which revealed a “slightly bulging” lumbar disc.
In November, at perhaps her 9th appointment, the physio did what she called a “fascia release” of the (rearranged) LD muscle, which almost immediately felt very sore. Next day, her reconstructed boob was decidedly not happy, so my wife ended up resting her left arm for the next 2-3 weeks because the whole area over the shoulder blade and through to her left boob still felt very sore.
At this point we consulted the Macmillan breast care nurse, whose opinion was that scar tissue had been irritated by this “fascia release” and would settle down in time.
She fixed us up with the leaflet of post-breast-op exercises, some of which my wife is able to do, and some of which she is not able to do because her rearranged LD gets sore when she tries.
Present state of play after twelve physio sessions, the last three with a different practitioner, is that her back strength generally is slowly increasing with less spasming low down, but her left LD is still very weak and sore when it goes into spasm, the greatest discomfort being where it attaches to her arm She has close to the normal range of movement in that shoulder, but very little strength in it when the muscle spasms. When it behaves itself, she has reasonable strength in the shoulder.
As of today, her current physio is saying that the upper back/shoulder spasms and weakness are outside her area of expertise and that my wife needs to consult the breast care team. When we last spoke to the breast care team, the feeling was that the problem is down to aggravated scar tissue, which we find very difficult to accept - particularly as it is now seven weeks since the “fascia release”.
Does anyone please have a suggestion for a sensible way forward now?