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…That was four years ago – as time passed, people searching for
answers stumbled across my blog and checked out what I had to say. The
following entry first appeared in January 2014.
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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