Stage 3 Advanced breast cancer

Hi LizT, welcome and I hope you get some answers, I would firstly ring your BC nurse and ask her to explain things thoroughly,  I was told I had grade 3 DCIS  my surgeon said grade 1 was very slow growing and 3 was a fast growing cancer that may need more treatment (chemotherapy) yes you'd of thought the physio for arthritis would of been put on the back burner for now as the cancer is more serious . Metastases means it has spread. I really think you need answers and there will be someone on here in a slightly similar situation..take care and please ring you BC team xx

There is no grade 4. Only grades 1,2, and 3. These have to do with the appearance and behaviour of the cancer cells regardless of their location. Did your oncologist say anything regarding what stage the cancer was?

Hello, just to clarify about Stage 4 breast cancer.  Here in the US it is considered metastatic breast cancer.  I don’t know if it is staged differently in other countries.

Barbars

Well i have metastasis in my right rib, spine and pelvis- gp misdiagnosed arthritis, 2 nd gp refused to see me. I suppose I am lucky I was sent an appointment for a routine mammogram which the pandemic had delayed. It took 4 months to get treatment. Do i sue them?

Hi GreyCats, I was confused by grades and stages when first diagnosed and a lot of people I talked to that had never had dealings with cancer used the terms interchangeably. There are the three grades as you've rightly pointed out that are used to describe how aggressive the cancer is. But I thought it might be helpful to mention that there are 4 stages which are to do with size and spread, in fact 5 as there is stage 0 too. Within those stages, there are also varying degrees. So stage 4 means it has spread to other parts of your body.

I know you know this as you've asked about stages, I just thought in case there are people reading it and looking for info as 'grade' and 'stage' often get muddled up and it can be quite confusing at first.

Hi LizT, sorry you've had such a tough time. Do you have any further appointments booked or a treatment plan yet? They may want to shrink with chemo and see how everything responds before deciding what to do next.

Only you can decide whether you want to sue your health authority. The only thing I would say on that is that it will take a lot of energy to do that and you may just want to concentrate on yourself until you are in a more stable condition and understand everything that is happening

Good point. My own line of thinking was that it was possible this lady's onclogist may have focused their talk around the grade of the cancer, and possibly never mentioned the stage. I think she needs clear answers from her team both about the grade and the stage of her cancer, as well as a clear idea of what their current treatment plan for her is. This, to me, would be of the highest priority both due to the practical implication, and also for one's own orientation.

Regarding the time it took for the referral and treatment, and since this lady is considering taking matters down the legal route, there are solicitors who specialise in medical issues who would be qualified to tell her whether or not she should proceed along these lines, and if so, how.

Unknown said:

Hello, just to clarify about Stage 4 breast cancer.  Here in the US it is considered metastatic breast cancer.  I don’t know if it is staged differently in other countries.

It is the same everywhere, with a curious exception: For a while, for statistical research purposes, and I cannot remember which country it was -- could have been the US -- they kept the stage as it was at diagnosis even if it metastasised later, so if a patient present at first as "stage 2" and the cancer later progressed, it was then designated, "stage 2 metastatic." There was a lot of frustration and annoyance with doing it this way, as people felt, rightly, that it did not make sense. If I remember right, this was at the time true for all solid tumour type cancers, not just breast cancer. So while there is really no such a thing as, "stage 2 metastatic" within the staging system, as "metastatic" in this context puts it within stage 4, such terms were in fact used. I have no idea if they are still using this system, I cannot find a reference to it anywhere at the moment by doing a quick search. 

I don't know if you want to put your energy into sueing them but I would certainly write a letter of complaint if only to stop it happening to someone else xx

Court sessions take up too much time and effort, which will probably be useful to you now for other purposes. I sincerely sympathize with you and wish you to overcome this disease. My friend devoted himself to breast cancer research after this disease claimed his mother's life. Now they are researching a prototype 4t1 tumor model, and he says that there is a high probability of creating an effective decoration for people with stage 4 of the disease. I hope that this will happen as soon as possible.