Changes were made to Mets forums

Moderators

Hello All, 

So, here is the follow up to so many constructive suggestions:

3 forums:

1. For those who are concerned but NOT diagnosed with a recurrence or mets

2. For those just diagnosed with a recurrence or mets

3. Stage 4 breast cancer.

Let me know if this works for most of you.

Many thanks,

Melissa 

badboob67

My opinion is that a "just diagnosed with recurrence or mets" is superfluous. What about a "recurrence" forum?  Now that the mets section is "Stage IV", where do those with recurrence fit in?

Beesie

I agree with badboob.  The "Just Diagnosed with Recurrence or Mets" seems unnecessary.  And recurrence and mets don't necessarily go together.  A recurrence could be DCIS or Stage I - that's very different than mets.  I would think that someone newly diagnosed with mets probably would want to head to the Stage IV forum.  So perhaps the new forum could be renamed "Just Diagnosed with a Recurrence" although truthfully I think we may be parsing things too finely.  But that's just my opinion - I think some of the distinctions are very important (Stage IV, for example) but overall I feel that there are too many forums and it sometimes makes it harder for women to get the answers the need because they are overwhelmed by the choice and just don't know where to post their question.  I see posts without any responses often and I'm redirecting people all the time.  

I do think that renaming the "Recurrence and Mets" forum to "Stage IV" is great! 

marshakb

You are right Beesie, I was "just" dx'd with mets in Dec.  I'm comfortable going straight to the stage iv forum.  The problem was never about answering questions from someone newly dx'd with mets. 

otter

I agree with all of the replies above mine.  Separating "recurrence" from "metastatic BC" was one of my suggestions in my very long post to the thread that was on this forum yesterday.  Now that the forum changes have been made, I guess that thread was deleted.

I tried to explain in my post that I didn't think it was a good idea to mix "recurrence" with "mets" because a recurrence could be a tiny bump on a scar line (local recurrence), or it could be mets to the liver (distant recurrence).  Quite a contrast.

And, like everyone else here, I'm wondering if it's necessary to have a separate forum for the newly diagnosed--why would anyone newly diagnosed with mets even want to post there, and not to the Stage IV forum?  Won't people with mets be uncomfortable on the "newly diagnosed" forum because their treatment and prognosis are so different from those of someone with a local recurrence?

Maybe the moderators were trying to distinguish between people dealing with mets for the very first time, and people who have been struggling with mets for years and are now thinking about things like palliative care, hospice, and what the end will be like.

I do think it was a good idea to change the name of the "Recurrence and Mets" forum to "Stage IV Breast Cancer."  That makes the focus of that forum pretty clear.

And, I do like the new forum for women (and men) who haven't been diagnosed with a recurrence or mets yet, but are "concerned".  At first I didn't think posts about recurrence and mets should be mixed in that forum either.  But, it's probably okay to do that for the "concerned" group--after all, at that point nobody knows whether it will be local, distant, or nothing at all.  It is also good that the forum for those who are concerned about recurrence or mets is in the "Connecting with Others" section, rather than up at the top where the newcomers hang out.

It will be interesting to see who posts to the "just diagnosed" recurrence & mets forum.

otter