Hi everyone, I was lying in bed last night thinking thinking as you do, and i am wondering just how many of us out there were initially diagnosed with stage 4 metastic breast cancer, I had been having my mammograms every two years and then three months before my next one I had excrutiating pain in my left breast, went to my gp, straight to adelaide for ultrasound mammogram and three fine needle biopsies, then off to breast surgeon as we thought it was early breast cancer, he then ordered the scans and bone scan to do the staging process, when we went back for results, it was off for a ct of my liver there and, fortunately his rooms were adjacent to a radiology rooms, so the results were given to him in 20 minutes, then we got the news, it was in my liver, so then the merry go round really started, I went in to FIX IT mode, we went and so my oncologist, and fortunately for us he is fantastic and has an amazing skill set, so then it was chemo, then tamoxifen, then feamara, which worked well for 9 months, now its affinitor and aromicin, last mri showed up more spots on my spine about 30 or more, now its more scans on Fri.30th jan, results on 3rd Feb, app. with radiation specialist on Feb9th due to a lot of pain in my hip, I will see him and see what he has to say, and so it goes on and on.
However the reason for all this is to try and find out just how many of us on diagnosis received the news it was already stage 4, I have had the braca gene test and that came back inconclusive, I have to believe that it was just the luck of the draw, even though I had had regular mammograms since I was 40, this came about because my mother had just died of non hodgkins lymphoma and it really scared me, I had to really push my gp to have a mammogram at that age but for peace of mind he agreed, my query also is how long would it take for stage 4 to set it self up in my body no one seems to be able to answer to question and it makes me feel guilty that I should have done more,somehow, not sure what I could have done though, well thanks for reading this, and any information would be helpful.
Is there a database for women with an initial diagnosis of stage 4, and how many of us are there with the advanced cancer diagnosis in the country,
many thanks and look forward to hearing from anyone with information.
