Not a question, just need to cope

[Dnmh]

I'm waiting for an answer in the Cancer forum, but I have found the support in this forum very comforting. The stress of this worry is exacerbating my arthritis and whatever else is wrong with me... This about my mom, and now a POTS specialist is telling my sister she doesn't have POTS! So what will that mean for me? Here is my post about mom:

I was wrong. In a presvious post, I said my mother had metastisized breast cancer. She had breast cancer but has CLL & Multiple meyloma. She has some tumors in her hip bone and a few in a scapula. She's had a lump, now about the size of an egg cut in half, for about a year. She ignored it, thinking (hoping) it was only a cyst. She saw an oncologist the other day. He told her it was a tumor, and that it seems to be attached to a tumor in the hip and it has to come out. When she was first diagnosed, they told her the tumors were not getting oxygen at the time, but once they did, there was nothing they could do. She has to see a surgeon to have it removed and biopsied, as well as getting blood work, x-rays, bone scans plus an upper endoscopy & colonoscopy. I need to understand it so that I can do whatever I need to help her. The web has info, but it's all in medical terminology that I'm not understanding.If the tumor is attached to the hip tumor, does that mean it's getting oxygen? Her oncologist isn't telling her much.

Thanks for the venting space!
D.

[txsilver]

Wow.  You do have a lot going on, bless your heart!  My father has multiple myeloma.  He had tumors in several locations that they treated.  He also had 2 stem cell (his own stem cells) transplants that were precipitated by chemo.  Thing is, that is the only kind of cancer he has.  CLL makes your mom's situation different.  I think it depends on what kind of tumors she has on her hip, both or 2 of the same.  I don't think the oncologist will be able to tell that until they remove them and send them to the lab, but this is far from my area of expertise.
My suggestion would be to go with your mother to an appt. and ask questions directly to the oncologist.  It may be that your mom is not asking many questions.  Maybe she does not want the answers, maybe she is getting the information but is overwhelmed and forgetting it or any other of the myriad of reasons we do not obtain or pass along the information we have.
What I do know is how scary it is to have a parent receive a cancer diagnosis.  If there is anything we can do to support you, please post it here in our forum.  If we NEED to link it to arthritis (which we don't) then it is elevating your stress level which will aggravate your symptoms and thus is completely related :)

[Dnmh]

Thank you (again). Yes, stress aggravates all my symptoms. Mom is intelligent enough, and bold/blunt/brass enough to ask, just just doesn't like this doctor. He replaced her previous PCP whom she had a fantastic relationship with... she doesn't like his style. She will see the surgeon on Monday, and hopefully the oncologist (I had my appointments confused) on Friday but she doesn't like him either and the endoscopy/colonoscopy on wednesday. I hope we have more answers after monday.
I offered to go with her to the surgeon Monday and she told me she could handle it...