NEED ADVICE

HI many,  Your onc is just being pro -acitve.  Anytime I complain of ANYTHING, he orders a scan.  I even mentioned it once on this board about my Onc being to aggressive. I think your wife is just having anything else ruled out.  The chemo is brutal and often there is breakthru nausea even when they give anti nausea meds.  You and your wife are still raw from all you've been thru, and like all of us you are waiting for another shoe to drop.  Let your onc do what he does to keep those cancer cells at bay and try to trust that the treatment will bring good results for her.

Barb

many -

Kathleen has a very good point.  Ask the onc.  So many of us get caught up in the moment when we're in the exam room we forget that basic notion.  But I will say that I had multiple scans during my active treatment - before chemo, after chemo which was before surgery, after surgery and even after rads. All those scans were just tracking how the treatment was going and making sure that nothing was being missed.  So my inclination is to say that this is jus a scan to verify that nothing new has happened since your wife is asymptomatic (nausea doesn't count since that goes hand-in-hand with chemo).

Was she tested for a BRCA gene mutation?

I agree with the girls above.  Call the onc today with a list of questions in hand.  That way you won't forget any (I HATE it when I leave the office and forgot to ask something important ).  Each doc approaches each patient in a different manner, and there are SO many variations of this crappy disease that he/she is probably just being proactive.  Did they say anything other than they wanted to do the scan that alarmed you?

Take care,

Sharon

As for the BRCA thing, I am BRCA+ and have had no family hx of BC...none, I am the first.  So, you don't have to have a family hx to be positive but it does happen that way usually.  I think dr is being proactive also.

I think it is great your onc is being pro active. It could be he always does this and your comment about him always doing a mid chemo analysis seems to fit this. My onc is the same way. It probably is just to make sure all is good. It is nerve wracking waiting for the results, but when the results are good it is such a relief, and if not so good, so much better to know now. I am hoping for a clear scan for your wife, and it does seem likely that it would be. You are a great husband, you hang in there and do something nice for yourself. It is very difficult to be a caregiver. Do the two of you ever have a "cancer" free date or day? Pick out a time and focus on what the 2 of you enjoy doing, and then have cancer talk off limits.. I know it is hard to do, but a counselor recommended this to my husband and I and we have actually now have had a few cancer free dates and it is so nice!  Also, it was mentioned that he needed to take his time away, for my husband that is going fishing for a couple of hours. I can manage without him for a bit and he comes back in a much more relaxed mind set, better for both of us!

Many,

I'm really glad your wife is tolerating chemo well.  

Especially for those of us diagnosed at Stage III, there are a lot of scans down the road.  Some doctors will scan periodically regardless of what's going on, some will just scan if there are symptoms.  But even if you have a doctor who just scans for symptoms, the threshold of what symptoms need to be there before a scan is ordered is really, reallly different than for a person without the cancer.  

For example, I had some pain along the side of my sacrum during chemo.  I know if I were anybody else, and my doctor weren't an oncologist treating a cancer patient, I wouldn't have gotten a scan.  But I am a cancer patient so I got a scan.  It wasn't likely my pain would have been from a metastasis during chemo, but like Apple said, not impossible.

Ultrasounds, MRI's, PET's, CT's, bone scans - we get all of them way more often, and the choice of which one is specific to the body part in question and what your particuar doctor and insurance favor.

My experience is that I am always scared when I get any test now.  I think the fear is kind of normal, if that makes sense.  It makes it a little (only a little) easier for me knowing that.   

My best wishes are with you and your wife.   

Yes, it is possible but not likely.  If this is standard procedure in his practice than I don't think there is any real need to worry at this time.  I like this idea very much, because an ultrasound is not really an invasive procedure that has a radiation component.  I kind of wish my oncologist did this sort of thing.

I'm glad to hear everything looked good, sounds like your dr was just being cautious.  I hope she can tolerate taxotere and continue tx, it was a rough one for me.  Yes, the ovary removal will help...I had mine removed in June & it was an easy surgery.  If you don't then she will most likely be on Lupron once a month, it's an injection to stop your ovaries from working.  Most of the ER is produced in the ovaries and an AI will take care of the traces of ER produced in other areas.  Good luck with the rest of tx.