Radiation on hip bone.

Silba

Hi, have metastatic breast cancer , left breast, left lymph and two lesions in hip bone, just finished six months chemo, 4 AC/T and 12 Taxol. no change , so semi good news. Have a lot of pain in my hip even if keeping very active , onc. suggested radiation for pain , now he is saying it can kill or slow down tumors in hip area. has anyone had this done and what has been the outcome .soon to have double mastectomy. Only 49 so don't want to limit treatment options  but confused ......cheers Silvia

JoeyLiz

So sorry for what you are going through.
Radiation is very good for bony mets. It should stop it progressing further in the area. It can cause a flare up of pain before you get the benefit though. Best wishes. 

Silba

Thank you.

LMK74

Hi @Silba, my mum had metastatic lung cancer with Mets in her spine among other places. Her spine caused the most pain, she had radiation on it and pain relieved. Best of luck.

wendy55

Hi @Silba,
I have mets to my spine and 4 years ago I was offered what was called palliative radiotherapy, I must add I also suffered with back pain due to a work injury and the mets to my spine just made it worse.
I had the radiotherapy, which consisted of a one off treatment of radiation and it was very successful and 4 years later I am still relatively pain free.So very sorry to hear that this has happened, perhaps you would like to join the living with metastatic breast group.
wendy55

Hankster

Radiation made a huge difference for me.  It reduced the pain in my hips by about 80%  4 years on pain level is the same 

Silba

Hi Hankster, that is very helpful information, I just wanted to know percentage rates of success as oncologist says it helps but wouldn't put figures down, from what I'm hearing it's worth the treatment .

Hankster

Hi Silba the thing about mets is it is different for everyone. I would recommend it I hope it works as well for you as it did me.  Good luck 

Silba

This is a general question ,has anyone had to switch from going from private to the public system for surgery due to the huge GAP costs, any suggestions would be helpful , seeing the same  plastic surgeon that operated on a girlfriend through medicare , but wants mega bucks because I have health insurance .?????? 

Jenmegs

Hi @Silba,

Wanting to say I admire you cos after getting through six months of chemo following news of hip bone mets and getting to all steady results, you are setting sails for the next things for your best health. 

How best to manage hip pain?

If you decide radiotherapy, am wondering how the timing and dose will best fit in with your bilateral mastectomy and reconstruction? Should you go for radiotherapy, which helped my hip mets ages ago, I  know the radiotherapy doses can be much more targeted now and with a short course. Not sure if this is still only available through clinical trials? Maybe another member here can help should you want to check radiotherapy things out close by for you. Usually the chemotherapy doctor refers you over to a radiotherapy doctor with all the tumour cell details.

Figuring out the timing? Just guessing, maybe your doctor has said something like: let your body pick up from the chemo, then have the surgery and then think about the rads???

So maybe you want to find out if there is a way or ways you can knock the hip pain out of the equation, or at least make it more liveable for before and after your surgery period, if this is the order you are looking at. 

Costs, gaps etc??
Hoping this part of the forum here might help you tease out the best ways for you closest to home, specially as radiotherapy, e.g. to breast, breast surgery and plastic surgery can be a part of what people need to figure their way through whether they have an early stage BC or mets. Jenny x

jena

Hi @Silba. My response is most likely a little late, however I thought I’d share my experience with you anyway. 

I was diagnosed with primary breast cancer in Feb 2014 then, after an all clear in Feb 2017, I was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer on 1 May 2017. I was suffering from inexplicable & terrible pain at the time.  I started chemo within a week of the metastatic diagnosis & a few days later, radiation treatment to my back. My spine & hips are riddled with mets ....well, pretty much all my bones really. 

After some radiation flare up pain, I was soon in far less pain than I had been in some time. I have since had single treatments for extreme pain in my right hip and some months later, left hip and back. Each of my 3 treatments resulted in significant pain relief, so my experience of radiation treatment has been fantastic. I’ve not needed further treatment to date because the disease is not progressing.  I did, however, start to go down this path late last year but it turned out I had a break in my pelvis. It has rebroken twice and is now healed miss aligned    It just broke  My advice to you is, don’t let that happen!

I live with pain that I successfully managing with cbd paste   A topic I’d like to discuss as I’m interested to know if many others are using cbd and / or cannabis oil  to manage their symptoms.  What has been the response of their medical team?  I’m sure others are interested so will check to see if there is a discussion thread about this. 
All the very best for your treatment and surgery @Silba

Sister

@jena There have been a couple of discussions going on about cannabis oil.  I think there are issues with the legislation (and practice) being different state to state.  You may find it more useful to start a new discussion on the topic if you can't find the info you're looking for in previous ones.

Hankster

@jena it would’ve great if you  started a new thread on canibis treatments.  It has never been raised by my medical team but I would rather be used it instead of endone which really helps but has side effects. I am really interested if and how widely it is being used across the group 

arpie

@Hankster    @jena   @Silba     Here is some info on Cannabis Oil in Australia - well worth watching the whole video to see how well it can control pain & do away with multiple medications!   Access to it varies from state to state

All the best - I hope that you can find some relief from the pain    

https://onlinenetwork.bcna.org.au/discussion/19569/medicinal-cannabis-oil-reduction-of-pain-improvement-in-well-being#latest

jena

Thank you for the video link @arpie. It is certainly worth watching.

@Hankster I  have had great results with cbd paste for pain. I no longer take any other pain medication. It took a few weeks to get my dosage right but from day 1 I was able to reduce my opioid meds. It took just over 2 weeks for me to stop taking opioids altogether. A relief as they numbed both the pain and my brain.

I will begin another discussion to get an idea of how many others are using or have tried cannabis therapy, and how do/ did they find it.  

Uffy

@Silba, my mets is in my spine, ribs and sacrum. I had really bad groin pain and couldn't walk without limping so ended up having an mri. Turned out my sacrum tumour had grown through my pelvis onto the top of my hip. I had 12 sessions of radiotherapy to my pelvis. It helped greatly with the limping and my routine bone scan showed (just) the top of the hip is now tumour free. It was worth it for me.