Stage 4 breast cancer

[Badnewsblues]

Hi all. Dsis had breast cancer 6 years ago, treated and in remission, but this week has been diagnosed with a single ovarian met which has been surgically removed. She is 48 with 3 young children. Due to see her oncologist shortly to see what plan is. Any success stories out there of people who have had some good years following a stage 4 diagnosis? Any advice? Thanks in advance.

My mum was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer 3 years ago (fungating lesion, which covered the whole breast - she had been too scared to go to the doctor's). They had only expected her to live for a couple of months, due to the fact that they could not operate as it was so large. However, she was put on a brand new drug, which shrank the tumour, enabling them to perform a mastectomy. She is still here, and has quality of life. Modern advances are truly amazing. Hope your sister is ok.

@KatyN

Provided you aren’t shy of a bit of swearing Storm in a tea cup is a mate of mine. She writes a blog and is on Instagram. She is bloody brilliant

Can you send some links to her please?

Has a full CT been carried out to check it's just the one met? It is unusual; was the single ovarian met diagnosed with an ultrasound of the ovaries, or by a CT scan?

It's important to know; and has she had a CT scan AND bone scan to check the organs and bones? (Or a PET CT which does both one scan)?

If you're looking at research then "oligometastatic" is the word you need. This means one met only which is rare but the researchers know now that it does improve survivability. Research is new but some is about.

She is likely to now have chemotherapy of some sort, but this depends on the scan results and what the ovarian met is "feeding" off - have the results come back with regards to whether it's ER positive or Her2 positive for example?

Original breast tumour was ER+ve, HER-ve.
Histology margins are clear.
Ordinary recent CT and MRI grossly show no mets. However she hasn’t had a PET-CT that I know of.

I'm stage 4, diagnosed with primary in Oct 18 and bone Mets got me to stage 4 Dec 19.
I'm on targeted therapy after the chemo/surgery/radiotherapy treatment and back working nearly fulltime.
I've another chronic condition which causes me more issues on a daily basis then the cancer.
It's not always fun but I'm still here and today is the first day of my final diet so life is fairly normal 🤣
Hope that's the only met your sister has and targeted therapy is an option, it's much much easier than chemo.

@M0rT
Good for you and great that you’re back working full time