When "catching it early" means nothing

I lost my beautiful amazing mum one month ago to Metastatic Breast Cancer which had spread to the Ovaries,Liver,Bones and Peritneoum. She had an early stage Breast Cancer in 2007 for which she had a lumpectomy and radiotherapy followed by 5 years of Tamoxifen. Up until Jan this year she was walking 15 miles a day and teaching multiple group fitness classes then the 2nd week of Jan she had a few aches and pains in her back for which she went to the doctors and was prescribed painkillers then a week later she was struggling to get out of bed and being sick. Doctors did blood tests and mum received a call to go A&E as she had high calcium levels in her blood. 3 days later and after multiple scans and tests she was told it had come back and was widespread. She had been for regular mammograms and took amazing care of herself, she had no lumps or bumps in her breast in fact the Oncologist said that what is likely to have happened is a few tiny cells from the Original Cancer escaped and laid dormant going undetected for years and then they woke up and started going everywhere. There was no opportunity to catch this Cancer early and it makes me really upset and angry when all the advertising campaigns are geared towards checking yourself and catching it early when this wasn't possible in my mums case (and plenty of others I am sure). Mum had no symptoms until it was very late and she gained her angel wings only 3 weeks after diagnosis at 56. I have read that only 5% of money donated to the big cancer charities actually goes towards research into Metastatic diesese and how it happens and still no one really knows how/what and why it happens and yet this is the only way that the big C actually kills. Another shocking figure is that 30% of early stage Breast Cancer comes back similar to the way it did for mum. My question is what is being done to prevent this and are we any closer to actually finding out why and how we can stop this from happening? Thanks in advance x

Parents
  • Hi Alera, That sure was a pretty sad story, but unfortunately, as you said, is a possible reality for some cases of cancer "survivors". I've an impression that the current trend of cancer research and treatment is still quite unsatisfactory, specially on advance cases, but i personally think that science is progressing very rapidly as scientists and medical practioners are becoming more and more holistic and open to ideas and discoveries with the help of the internet. I've read somewhere that cancer will be more likely to be treated as a life long chronic illness rather than an acute one. And the treatment will be more about managing its growth and mutation (to reduce the cancers "evolutionary" advantages) rather than tearing them apart in one fell intrusive swoop.
Reply
  • Hi Alera, That sure was a pretty sad story, but unfortunately, as you said, is a possible reality for some cases of cancer "survivors". I've an impression that the current trend of cancer research and treatment is still quite unsatisfactory, specially on advance cases, but i personally think that science is progressing very rapidly as scientists and medical practioners are becoming more and more holistic and open to ideas and discoveries with the help of the internet. I've read somewhere that cancer will be more likely to be treated as a life long chronic illness rather than an acute one. And the treatment will be more about managing its growth and mutation (to reduce the cancers "evolutionary" advantages) rather than tearing them apart in one fell intrusive swoop.
Children
  • 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