After a recent scan there was something showing on my sacrum, neck and lumbar area, although the report did not state these were definitely cancer they weren’t there originally there, I have now been getting a strange feeling in the sacrum area kind of a dull ache . I rang an emergency number for the oncology registra and was told unless I had numbness, pins and needles in my legs or had lost control of my bowels or bladder to just take a painkiller! Surely there would be more warning if the bone were to fracture and can’t something be done to prevent this happening, I’m scared stiff at the moment that my spine will fracture and I will be left paralysed. Can anyone give me any advice as to what to do or warning signs. I don’t have extreme pain just a dull ache.
Hi Desi,
I’m afraid I can’t give you any useful advice on how spinal mets feel as I am one of the fortunate ones that at the moment has no pain from them, but the warning signs of spinal cord compression are what the onc reg mentioned:
numbness, pins and needles in your legs or loss of control of bowels or bladder plus numbness in your
hands or around your bottom or genitals.
The onc sounds like a right charmer! If they thought there was the slightest risk of spinal cord compression after looking at your scan I would have hoped that the doctor would have checked more thouroughly as to what these lesions were. Did the onc say that they were going to scan you again to find out what these ‘somethings’ are?
Sorry I couldn’t be more help; hopefully someone with more experience of bone mets pain will be along soon to reassure you.
I know how awful the anxiety can be.
Tink x
Hi again Desi, yes, my fault, I said the pain was doable when all of a sudden it wasn’t. A CT showed nothing but an MRI showed nerves being squashed as they travelled down leg. So Much better now. X