Hi It can sometimes be difficult to determine between bone mets and other degenerative disease but I expect from what your oncologist has said they do think it’s bone mets. A bone scan will help determine this. It isn’t unusual to be diagnosed with primary breast cancer and very soon after (or even at the same time) secondary breast cancer, sometimes it just shows up on a routine scan and quite often the patient doesn’t know the bone mets exist if they have no symptoms. The continuing treatment will be systemic which mean it will treat the whole body and the only extra treatment I think your Mum would have would be a bone strengthener. Hormone treatments generally work well, given the number of people on them who are on this forum, but occasionally they may not be effective. A scan after 3 months of treatment is usual and would determine if the treatment is effective. If it’s not there are plenty of different ones available for hormone positive, HER2 negative secondary BC. Hopefully this won’t be the case and your Mum will adjust to living with secondary BC and get a long time on this, her first treatment. Nicky
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