Jen, if you have not already, I would speak to a Solicitor who specialises in medical negligence. These are the issues I would want to discuss with my Solicitor:
(1) At the outset, it appears there was a misdiagnosis, in that your doctors diagnosed secondary cancer in the bone when in actual fact this was not the case . The question I would be asking my solicitor here is did doctors follow correct procedures in their original investigation and diagnosis. Your solicitor (or you), could ask to view your medical notes to see if there was any doubt expressed at the time about whether the hot spots were in fact bone mets. If doubts were expressed why were they not investigated before giving such a damning diagnosis?
I don’t think the issue about whether you should have been offered a mastectomy at the outset is really a legal issue, because your doctors would argue they were just following establisehd protocols. At the time, they believed your cancer had already spread to the bone, and that surgery would not be beneficial (as you probably know, there is an ongoing debate within the medical profession about the efficacy of surgery for those with secondary cancer with many doctors believing it is slows spread, and others believing it makes no difference, and can aid spread).
(2) However, I think there may be legal questions to answer about whether the delay and type of investigation carried out when doubts were raised over whether you actually had secondary cancer in the bone was reasonable and put you at increaed risk. When your doctors first began to question whether you actually had bone metastases, they should, in my opinion, have instigated a prompt appropriate investigation to determine the facts one way or the other (probably incorporating a bone biopsy). They then could have re-staged your cancer, at an earlier point, and initiated a whole new treatment regime (a mastectomy being the first line of treatment). Instead they delayed for almost a year and as a result your cancer was not re-staged, and treatment was delayed (in particular a mastectomy). As a result you did not receive a mastectomy until after the tumour in your breast had re-grown back and had became a much more aggressive type of cancer (changing it’s receptor fron just ER+ to Her2+ and ER+).
Thus I would want to ask my Solicitor several questions. (1) Given the original alleged misdiagnosisi, were the original investigation and diagnosis carried out properly (2) When doubts were raised about whether you had bone metastases or not, was the subsequent delay, and method of investigation reasonable. (3) Did this delay and investigation cause loss in terms of delaying appropriate treatment, leading to more aggressive cancer /increased risk/ worse prognisis.
Hopefully, with only 4 out of 19 nodes effected, you have had a lucky escape, but your doctirs should be required to answer these questions properly, and I doubt they will do that with just a letter of complaint.
This is just my opinion, and I would urge you to seek legal advice.
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I was in a real muddle!