Getting It Into Perspective
(22) This is the way I see my Stage IV breast cancer now. There comes a time when you have to take stock of what has happened to your life and how you want to view it. I feel that I'm extremely fortunate that my disease spread to my bones and not to organs because I've been told that bones contain the tumour for longer, which is a bonus. What isn't a bonus is that metastases to the bones are extremely painful; unbearably so, and it's impossible to carry on with normal life with the degree of pain that tumours in the spine generate, once they've caused nerve damage especially. The bones might contain it but, in doing so, they are stretched almost to breaking point, depending on how large the tumours are and this causes stress fractures. My metastases are in my skull, neck, shoulders, sternum, ribs, spine in several places, hips and one femur and is referred to as extensive and widespread. Now that I've been taking Letrozole for two years and have ha...