Hello Umi,
It's all very confusing in he early days. I received my secondary diagnosis in 2017 (after 11 years clear, or so I thought).
As I understand it, oncologists don't know which treatment will work until they try it, as each person appears to have their own individual cancer. When I found out my cancer was in my bones and lungs I turned to Google (very bad idea, try not to) and found very scary short life expectancies. Later I met a bunch of ladies (from this group) who encouraged me, especially as several had been living with this much longer.
If your mum's cancer is only in her spine, the likely course of treatment will be bone strengthening drugs, e.g. Denosumab injections. Any other drug will depend on what type of cancer, e.g is it hormone and/or herceptin positive or negative. In my experience oncolgists tend to be more interested in treating the cancer rather than the symptoms so it can take a while to sort out pain relief. Best person to ask about that is the GP. If the pain is really bad, she may be offered a short blast of radiotherapy, but again it will depend on the individual oncologist as some seem more keen than others. I had to push hard for radiotherapy to the bones that were causing me most pain (arm and sternum) but I have found it really helped.
Hopefully you are allowed to attend appointments with your mum as there is a lot to take in. It may help if you could find someone who speaks her language who has gone through this. For me, talking to others has been the best mental health treatment.
Lots of other things have helped with the pain. Try to find a local cancer charity, or your hospital may have a Macmillan centre or Maggies, they usually provide a whole raft of complimentary treatments that can be helpful, again you don't know what works till you try it.
Sadly the one thing that you can say is that you don't "recover" from this. Once the cancer has spread, it is with you for as long as you live. However, this does not mean life is over. I carried on working and have only recently decided to quit my job to spend more time with my husband. I don't feel ill, and now that I have my pain under control I can ignore it most of the time. In some ways my life is actually better now as life's priorities get sorted out.
