Pain in the sternum bone or heartburn???

[KristinSchwick]

Marcia,
I totally understand the fear of bone mets, I have 2. Let me just say that bone mets are super painful- even excruciating. Mine were in my hip/back, and I developed such a bad limp I couldn't walk without cringing in pain. Plus with bone mets they get worse everyday, they don't let up or stay the same- they get worse because they are growing and basically eating your bone. That being said, bone mets are not nearly as life threatening as other met spots- like liver, lung or brain.

I just went through a scare in my ribs- over my masectomy site, I was having some pain and I thought my rib was enlarged. Well I talked with my onc. and he said that rib mets would hurt with every inhalation and that the ribs will often shift and sometimes even extrude after a masectomy. So that put my mind at ease. My ca27.29 #s are still down so he wasn't worried.

One last thing to mention, you should rejoice that you have the option of tamoxifen- it combined with herceptin (aka triple + breast cancer) represents the greatest proportion of women who life 20+ years even after the cancer spreads. Unlike triple negative women who really have few targeted therapies available.

Kristin