Breast Cancer spread to Bones after clear CT in January. What to expect?

Hi DeeDee24817d6f84 

I am sorry your breast cancer has spread to your bones. It sounds like it’s been an unfolding horror story for you. I also have metastatic breast cancer. I found mine was in my liver in 2022 whilst I was still going through chemo after my primary diagnosis. It’s a horrible shock, isn’t it. It certainly took me to very dark places initially. I also had a PET/CT to confirm exactly where the cancer was. The process involves putting a radioactive glucose tracer into you through a cannula. You then sit and wait for an hour. Cancer cells take up the sugar more quickly than other cells so areas of cancer ‘light up’ on the scan. It’s therefore easier to read than a standard CT scan. 

It’s helpful that your cancer is ER+ as there are far more treatments available than, say, for my triple negative cancer. Your oncologist will come up with a plan. There are targeted treatments alongside bone strengtheners and oestrogen blockers. Hopefully the drug combination they come up with will hold your cancer in check. Many people do live good lives with metastatic breast cancer and I hope you do too.

Thank you for replying. Your not wrong about goiighng to dark places. Since I put the phone down 5 hours ago I have had all manner of thoughts going round and round. I keep clinging onto the part of teu phone call when she said the good news is that there are no organs involved. Like cancer is the bones is meant to be a positive! I know it's incurable and from what I've read they now treat it as a chronic illness so that does give me some hope. I'm just frightened what the PET Scan is now going to show. I do appreciate your detailed response in what to expect so thank you x

They will send you details of the PET/CT procedure. One thing to bear in mind is that the radioactive material is prepared individually for each PET/CT scan at a central UK location and then shipped out early each morning by lorry to the hospitals. They don’t know until some hours later whether the batch is ok - this sometimes leads to cancelled procedures. This happened to me on my second PET/CT. I found out before I travelled to the hospital but not before I had done most of the 6 hours of pre-procedure fasting required. It was rescheduled for a few days later and then went ahead. The scanner is very like the CT scanner but the whole thing takes a lot longer. It literally inches its way from head to toe. No breath holding involved. 

I maintained a blog during my treatment. This is the entry I wrote after my first PET/CT procedure  community.macmillan.org.uk/.../pet-ct-scan