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15993089 tn?1444575391

Worried about bone metastasis

I have been waking up with headaches and having numbness in my lips that started out in the mornings.  The headaches were relieved with small doses of ibuprofen.  I recently had a procedure that required anesthesia and when they checked my O2 sat with the finger thing prior to the procedure, it was 89%.  They had me take several deep breaths and moved it to my thumb and after several tries got a reading they were okay with.  My HCT never returned to normal since my chemo for breast cancer which ended almost a year ago.  I am having back and hip pain.  When I told my oncologist about the headaches and lip numbness a couple of weeks ago, he said it was probably just anxiety.  I'm scared these could all be early signs of metastasis but the oncologist clearly was not concerned.   (Breast CA was stage III, HER2+ 3+ overexpressing, metastatic to regional lymph nodes, estrogen & progesteron +, poor response to neoadjunctive chemo with a RCB score of 3.3)  I'm scared. Should I push to have the symptoms evaluated?
3 Responses
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Avatar universal
Consider nuclear medicine whole body bone scan and/or PET/CT.
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739091 tn?1300666027
Always advocate for yourself. I would push for a pet scan. Best wishes.
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Avatar universal
I think that if having evidence to the contrary relieves stress and anxiety then it could be worse pursuing.

The numbness in your lips does sound like it could be anxiety-related.

Have you considered relaxation or deep breathing exercises?

Headaches and back pain freak me out too.  Sometimes it's hard to rationalise that it isn't cancer returning and spreading.  If you access to tests then I would probably go ahead with that.  At least then you have a baseline and know where you stand with things.  

Sometimes placing trust in doctors can be extremely hard.

Hopefully you'll have answers by now.
Helpful - 0

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