Living with Breast Cancer

In 1990 I was diagnosed with BC, had a double mastectomy and 6 mos of adjuvant chemo (The lymph nodes showed no involvement.) Now is the strange part: In Nov 2004 I had a severe attack of vertigo and was hospitalized. After a CT scan I had doctors standing around my bed telling me they thought I had bone cancer. A biopsy confirmed breast cancer in the spine and sternum. I had previously had no pain. The C2 vertebra was seriously deteriorated and I was put in a heavy-duty neck brace and sent for 14 days of radiation. After that the hormone therapy began (Aromasin first, but it did not arrest the advance of the spine lesions, and then tamoxifen) In 2006 my routine MRI indicated “something” all along the spinal cord. Three lumbar punctures produced no cancer cells, but subsequent MRIs (every three months) showed the same spinal cord involvement along with the same bone lesions. Since June 2006 every set of scans show just the same: nothing better but nothing worse. I still take tamoxifen. I don’t feel very well much of the time–maybe pain but it is hard to describe. But I am still alive!