[bejuce]

Thank you so much, ladies! I saw my primary care doctor yesterday. I explained to her what I felt and asked her how to distinguish between heartburn pain and sternum bone pain. She said the answer was simple - pushing. If you push in the area and it's tender/sore/painful, then it's most likely due to bone pain. I must have made a panicked look because she smiled at me and said "but that doesn't mean it's cancer".

She thinks the most likely cause is costochondritis, as a result of all the heavy lifting I did over my camping weekend and the day before I felt the pain when I returned the tent (carrying it as a backpack in my back) to our local REI store. She told me to take Aleve, stop the Zantac and see how I feel in a few days. She also said that she thinks it's costochondritis with 95% probability and as we get past the age of 25, we're bound to have some pain once in a while.

I'm better today but can still feel tenderness when I press the area. Either way, I'm scheduled to have a bone scan and a CT soon and I'll find out for sure.

I was so anxious last night that I had to go to bed early at 9:30 to turn my brain off. I couldn't deal with the possibility of being a bone met in the sternum when I looked at my children. I hate it that I seem to be the kind of person who upon any pain or feeling immediately thinks it's the cancer returning. I hate it that if there's a 5% chance of it being a bone met, I think that I must be in this 5%. I wonder if I'll ever stop feeling this way.

I was told that I had a 1% chance of having breast cancer when I was diagnosed, so I don't trust statistics anymore. How do I convince myself that it's not all doom and gloom sometimes? What are some of your coping mechanisms when you're dealing with all this anxiety? My children need me so much and I can't see myself dealing with cancer again. At least not so soon. I need to be here for at least 20 years. See how I am? How can I be more optimistic???

Thanks!!!

Marcia