Struggling to re-frame my thinking about my Mum's diagnosis - I could do with some advice

Good morning ladies (and gents)

 

My mum has recently been diagnosed with grade 2 invasive lobular breast cancer in one breast. We thought OK, she’s going to have a mastectomy and then be on Letrosole for the rest of her life. Then yesterday, boom! The CT scans shown 3 spots on her lungs around 7mm. So I guess we’ve gone straight to stage 4 without passing go.

 

The doctor has now referred us to an oncologist and says that he thinks that doing surgery isn’t the right thing. Rather he’d like to probably see her go straight onto Letrosole to shrink the tumour and hopefully stop this bloody thing in it’s tracks. She’s 82.

 

She’s happy that she doesn’t have to have an operation as is my Dad (79). I know I’m lucky to have them both but I’m really struggling here to reframe my thinking about her managing this condition. I’ve done so much reading that I’m all over the place with statistics and prognosis.

 

Do you have any advice for me, as the daughter of somebody with metastatic breast cancer about how I can reframe my thinking about her managing this long term as a chronic condition instead of just sitting here thinking crap it’s all gone wrong?

Thanks for reading

Julie

I have secondaries in lung and bone been on letrozole and ibrance and initially was to have surgery but tumour in breast has shrunk with treatment, I had surgery to breast and lymph nodes in 2009 and was disease free til 2018 when secondaries happened. Hope your mum gets on ok with oncologist . Liz