Hello everyone. This is my first post to this forum. I found this forum doing a search on bone scans, white spots and found a thread on here from someone who had white spots on her bone scans that turned out to NOT be metastatic and I wanted to learn more about her case but the thread was already archived. So sorry I did not post an introduction, just impatient because I saw my scan but did not get the official results yet and of course, just praying that maybe the white spots I saw are something other than metastasis.
I had a lumpectomy and axillary node dissection in 2011. They told me I was “Cancer Free” YAY! Then I got it again in the same breast that they saved, in 2020 so had a mastectomy. I guess I should not have looked at the scan and should just have waited for the report and my dr visit but curiosity got the better of me so I peeked.
I also had a brain scan but I have no idea what I’m looking at there.
So, has anyone had any white spots on their bone scan that turned out NOT to be cancer? These are not bright like the bladder spot and they are very small in the rib area on the side where I had my mastectomy. I had 78 radiation treatments in all so I was hoping that maybe the radiation just damaged the bone in there? Wishful thinking. Guess I’m just posting so someone will share some good news with me so I can have some hope to hold on to before I see my Onc. Thank you for reading my post.
I am assuming you are in the US and not the UK? People in the UK don’t have the option of seeing their scans before a doctor reviews it. At any rate, if it was me, I would probably end up calling someone asap at the doctor’s office to get some clarification. Because truly, who knows. None of us are trained to evaluate white spots on a scan. I know when I had a dexa scan the bone looked really white and it freaked me out. But I asked the radiation specialist and he told me dexa scans weren’t used for diagnostic purposes and I could tell by the way he was looking at me that I had no idea what I was looking at so I should just wait to hear something from the doctor. And I just got my bone density report and that was it. No one said anything about the bone being white looking. So in saying that, you may be looking at something perfectly normal or if not it may be age related bone changes. But evaluating a scan isn’t something any of us have any experience with doing so is best left to the professionals. Did they note anything with the scan? You should get a description from the radiologist who evaluated it.
Hello Sun! It was not a good idea looking at your scans. We get easily scared by every little bit of information but we don’t actually know what we are looking at. Not all the points that show up on a petscan are “cancer”. Lots of them are residual tissue damage from radiation etc. So, wait and have that chat with your Onco before giving up hope … Sending lots of courage your way.
That is exactly what I was wondering, if there could be damage from the radiation that I had showing up as white spots.
My Dr. office just called to schedule me for follow up and did not schedule me with onc but with nurse practitioner which is very good news because if the results were bad they would never do that.
Also, they said the results said “OK to release to patient” which they also would not do if they were bad.
So I don’t have the full picture yet but going tomorrow morning for what I hope will be good news. I will definitely ask about those white spots though and will let you all know what I find out in case anyone else ever runs into this issue. Thank you for your kind responses, very much appreciated. Wishing everyone well and boy do I wish there were no such thing as cancer.
Amen to that and good luck!!
Agree with you on that! Let your sun shine on “Soleil”
So I wanted to provide what I think is an important update for anyone else who might have this question in the future. There were white spots on my bone scan that Dr. Google had me thinking were cancer so I came here in a tizzy/panic looking for answers. Then I had a visit with my oncs nurse practitioner and as soon as I got the call I knew everything would be ok because 1. they do not schedule you with the nurse practitioner to give you bad news like stage 4 metastasis, and 2. they told me that my results which they did not give me over the phone were “ok to release to patient” which also would indicate good news. So when I got there they told me there was no cancer so of course I wanted to know about those white spots. So they did not really know what they were exactly but they knew it was not cancer so I being a pain in the neck that I am wanted to understand well if you don’t know what it is, then how do you know its not cancer? So she explained to me about the equipment they have to examine the bone scan results and how they can look at those white spots up close and see into the bone and tell what kind of damage it is and know not only if it is cancer or not but if it is an older cancer that has already been treated by chemo and radiation or a new spot of cancer. This was all very enlightening to me and also made me so happy because I felt assured that they were very sure that there was no cancer and I wanted to share this here because other people might go through the same thing as me. So maybe don’t look at your bone scan and see things that might look suspicious to you lol just let them tell you what they find. So my bone scan and brain mri I just had both came out clean so I am very happy. I beat cancer twice already so I am wishing everyone who is on this site the very best and thank you for being here for me and for each other.
You will be fine Soleil!! Just go out and live life and stop worrying about the rest …
Felt sure it was going to be OK. Bravo!