From the first moment my wife discovered she had breast cancer, there was a deafening silence from the men I know. Even ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer seemed to have received a gag order from some Central Cancer Command and did little more than mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started this blog…
The first question that comes to mind is, “Is a brain tumor the same as brain cancer?”
While I don’t usually go to Yahoo Ask for my medical information, I decided today to START there because the answerer is both an MD and clear:
“Interesting that you bring this up. Primary brain malignancies have always been called brain ‘tumors’ rather than ‘cancer of the brain’. Yet many are clearly cancerous, locally invasive, progressing malignancies. Strange the way people perceive words. If you tell patients they have a ‘tumor, it does not seem as ominous to them as saying they have ‘cancer’…there is confusion that many people have in regard to this topic. A person with lung carcinoma that has spread to the brain has lung cancer in the brain. It is not a brain cancer. It is still lung cancer that is growing in the brain area. A person with a glioblastoma multiforme has a brain tumor - but these are usually aggressive cancers. As for cures - that depends on the primary brain cancer/tumor type and the stage.
Interesting question regarding the semantics of this.”
Source(s): MD medical oncologist - cancer specialist doctor Spreedog, 2010 http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20091114024633AADSsIx
This is in concordance with what I’ve already found out about bone cancer and lung cancer – when you have had breast cancer and is spreads (which is what Metastatic Breast Cancer is), you have breast cancer cells growing wild in the bones, liver, lungs, brain and various other places.
So what happens? This seems to me to be a truly horrible kind of MBC because the brain is the seat of Human consciousness.
The writer here expresses this terror: “It was because of a few unusual symptoms, that several months ago I requested a brain scan. By the time the date arrived for the scan, the symptoms, along with my fears, had disappeared. Imagine my surprise when the next day my oncologist called to say that they had found 2 tiny spots on my brain. The news was devastating. While breast cancer is every woman’s nightmare, and metastasis is the nightmare of everyone who has breast cancer, brain metastasis is the nightmare of everyone who has metastatic disease. It was so frightening that I couldn’t speak to anyone about it. I could barely allow myself to think about it. None of this is news to you. You wonder how many tears you can actually shed. You wonder if you will ever feel like your old self again and if your friends and family will ever think of you in the same way. You wonder if you will lose the person you are. It is the most terrifying diagnosis anyone can have, even those of us who are used to bad news.”
What are the symptoms? Please keep in mind that the symptoms are DIFFERENT depending on where the cancer attacks first. Also, OTHER things can cause these symptoms. My wife works as a classroom aide with kindergartners – she gets headaches sometimes, as anyone would who tries to work with a room full of five-year-olds!
Symptoms include: “changes in the ability to think, understand and use words correctly; emotional changes; weakness; dizziness; seeing lights, seeing double, or narrowing of vision; problems with balance; seizures; nausea and vomiting; changes in smelling, taste, hearing. If any of these symptoms persist (that is, stick around for a while) like a headache that is worse in the morning, lasts for days, or recurs every day, then you’ll want to talk to your health care authority.
Once you report to the cancer care center or your doctor and there appears to be reason to suspect MBC-brain cancer, an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) is the most effective technology for diagnosing breast cancer brain metastases. It does a better job in distinguishing a single metastasis from multiple metastases, which is an important factor in determining what kind of treatment a patient needs.
Unfortunately, treatment for MBC-brain cancer is problematic still. In m0st cases, whole brain radiation (which is exactly what it sounds like) is the first line of offense. There is good evidence that this treatment is effective almost half of the time in completely reversing the effects of the cancer. In MOST cases, it reduces the symptoms significantly. It is also a shorter-term treatment than the original chemotherapy with radiation doses given daily for 5-10 days (though this is sometimes spread over a longer period to lessen the side-effects.
At other times, the radiation is aimed from multiple directions at specific metastases. This has the advantage of fewer side-effects, but there is no clear EVIDENCE yet that this is as effective as whole brain radiation treatment.
Other, less common treatments include brain surgery (physical removal of the cancer), chemotherapy (not effective usually because the chemo can’t break through the barrier into the brain through the blood (called the blood-brain barrier); and a combination of the above.
Finally: “‘So much depends on the aggressiveness of your individual cancer, the time to recurrence from original diagnosis, any other metastases, and overall health—and, the number, location and size of the brain mets (metastases), and whether they are symptomatic or not,’ Patty observed. ‘I was so sure that I would die within 18 months of my first diagnosis with brain mets. I readied for the time of my death. Now, I’ve had to revise things a few times. I wonder if I hold some kind of record for brain MRI’s, having had them on average every two months for five years—that would be around thirty, with bad veins! I’ve had brain mets for five years and have been living with eight lesions for two and a half years.’”
References: http://brainmetsbc.org/
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