Hi alera90,

I am so very sorry to learn of your lovely Mum's passing - it is all such a shock! My Dad passed away 5 years yesterday and I am still so very sad (secondary in bile ducts - primary unknown).

I just cannot understand why people who have had breast cancer are not given a full body  scan - in my neck of the woods, those who have suffered with bowel cancer are given an annual CT scan as standard!

Having been diagnosed in November 2015 with lobular breast cancer (right breast with spread to two lymph nodes - one macro and one micro) I have now had my first annual follow up (February of this year) -  this entailed a mammogram of my left breast and thankfully all 'appears' to be fine.

My mum will pay for me to have an MRI/Cat Scan in six months time. I have asked to have my blood tested for CA 15-3 and CA 27-29 but to no avail. I am anxious every day but I just try to get on with things.

Once again, I am so sorry for the loss of your Mummy.

X

Hi Dunanat1,

Thank you for your response,

I am so sorry to hear about your dad x

I wish there was Annual Body Scans too but the truth is I'm not sure if it would have made any difference as sometimes the cells have broken off from the Primary Cancer before it's discovered and just become dormant without detection until they are big/serious enough to be seen or cause symptoms. 

I am very conscious that for anyone that has had BC I sound all very doom and gloom and I really do not mean to x  I think it will be really good for you to have the MRI and Cat Scans, it will be a good peace of mind it's a shame about the blood tests though, I don't understand why they cannot do them :( 

I feel there is so much emphasis placed on Mammograms but very little focus on those that have actually had BC and how to monitor and help these patients.

I hope yours MRI/scans are ok when you have them and I wish you as many Cancer Free years as possible xx

Hi Joyfulofjourney,

Thank you for your response,

i agree with you, I think more work and money needs to be put into focusing on Advanced Cancers, I feel the work is done with regards to early awareness and mammograms which is amazing but now time to move on and focus on something else.

i hope that one day Cancer can be treated as a chronic illness with less brutal side effects with some of the current treatments.

i read your bio and wish you good health for as long as possible xx

Hello Alera and thanks for posting,

I am so sorry to learn about your mum.  After 10 years of her doing okay it must have been especially hard for you all when the cancer came back and was so widespread.

The advertising campaigns are pitched at people who may not realise they have symptoms that could be due to cancer. Some people delay seeing their GP for ages because they don’t know anything serious might be the matter. The campaigns reflect the fact that in many types of cancer, initial treatment is usually more likely to succeed when a cancer is at an early stage. The earlier a cancer is found the less likely it is to have already spread through the body before being treated. But some cancers don’t have any obvious stand out symptoms when they are still small, so sadly when they are first picked up by then they are advanced. The campaign messages tend to be directed at the majority, but I can appreciate that they can sometimes miss the mark and be upsetting.

Unfortunately an early stage doesn’t guarantee that a cancer hasn’t spread and will never come back, but even so, because of the much lower risk of a recurrence with early stage disease, it is an idea worth perusing even though some people might not benefit. I am not sure where you got your 30% statistic from. It doesn’t sound quite right to me for these days because statistics look backwards and breast cancer treatments have advanced, but whatever the figure, it is true that after treatment some people will have a recurrence so more research is needed to prevent this.    

Researching new ways of diagnosing cancer as earlier as possible is one way of trying to prevent cancer from spreading. Another way is trying to find out more about the process of cancer spreading to be able to hinder it. Research is looking at more effective initial treatments so that any stray cells that do escape before surgery or radiotherapy don’t survive. And of course research is still trying to find more successful treatments when cancer has spread. I can’t tell you how long it will be before the entire process of cancer spreading is fully understood, or when there will be more effective treatments for people whose cancer has spread, but research is getting closer.  

We fund all sorts of research, a lot of which looks into the biology of cancers to try and understand how they behave including how they invade and spread. An example of this research is described on our science blog here . You can read about some examples of our research into breast cancer at this link   and about some facts and figures about our research funding here.

If you want to know more about the research we fund you can get in touch by email so your request can be passed on to our research information team. To do this you would need to follow this link to contact our Supporter Services team.

I hope this is of some use.

Take care,

Julia 

Hi Alera,

So sorry to read about your Mum.

There doesn't seem to be a standard approach within the NHS to annual scans for people with a history of cancer. Understandable given that there is often a small risk of triggering cancer with excessive CT scans and X-rays but how else can recurrence be diagnosed in good time?

I am in partial remission and have a chin to pelvis CT scan approximately every six months as part of my watchful waiting regime. 

Not sure what the answer should be.

Best wishes

Dave

Hi to all I had diagnosis of breast cancer march 2013. Found to be in four nodes. So treatment was wide local incision to remove tumour followed by another procedure to ensure margins were satisfactory. I then had 6 chemo treatments which were horrible, 35 radiation treatments followed by 4 boosts to tumour bed. I had 18 treatments with Herceptin as I was her2+. I had a full body scan including bone scan. In 2015 I started having pain in my lower back which prompted another bone scan which thankfully was clear. In 2016 following a mammogram I was diagnosed with micro calcification which resulted in 3 diagnostic mammograms followed by a guided biopsy to ensure the cancer was not back. All in all I cannot fault my treatment. I understand that it is hard to spot tumours in the early stage as they need to be about the size of a pinky nail. Anything smaller the machines font always pick up. I live with the threat of a recurrence as we all do but as my younger sister died if the disease under 2 years before my own diagnosis I am acutely aware that BC can return st anytime. She had 16 years clear but still died just after her 50 birthday. Until a person has personal experience it's hard to understand the fear which seems to seeped into every aspect of our life. I think more needs to be done about metastasis and less of the NHS money being spent for e.g. On tourism treatments which are usually very costly from what I read. Anyway sorry for rant the initial post had an affect on me when I read it. WA

Hi Tabz, thanks for getting back to me. I am so sorry to hear about your mum it's absolutely heartbreaking especially when she went through all that treatment recently. Its devastating being given a prognosis, I though we had plenty of time left but mum was gone in 3 weeks. I hope your mum has as long as possible with minimal suffering xx

Hi Willian, thanks for getting back to me. So sorry to hear about your sister and that you have dealt with this horrible disease too. I've read lots of research into Metastasis (probably around 80 pages deep into google) I just can't seem to switch off and it keeps me up at night that this is happening, cancer is spreading and nobody truly knows why or how to stop it I almost want to become a scientist to figure it out myself. I agree with you regarding the NHS money, at the moment it almost feels like if the Cancer has spread they really can't do anything other than try and control it "palliative chemo" how can we send people to space but we can't figure out why cells and cancers spread and kill 100's of people a year? x