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You may have steroids as part of your treatment or to control symptoms and help you to feel better. Steroids may be given: with certain chemotherapy drugs to prevent an allergic reaction or to reduce sickness to reduce swelling and control pain when there is a secondary cancer in the liver to reduce pressure and relieve headaches and sickness when there is a secondary cancer in the brain.

Thermal ablation is used to treat different types of cancer. It uses extreme temperatures (thermal) to destroy (ablate) cancer cells.

When were you diagnosed with secondary breast cancer? I was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer in May 2021 What type do you have?

Our #FightingToBeHeard campaign is in full swing and we have billboards located around the UK! Billboard locations change regularly and this blog will be updated with the most up to date information.

When I was diagnosed out of the blue in March 2014 with advanced breast cancer, I never thought that I would be living with a good quality of life 8 years on. I’m Her2 positive, and spent my first 18 months post diagnosis rattling through all the standard treatments, (including an expensive self-funded spell on Kadcyla before it was approved in Scotland – and which didn’t work,).

When were you diagnosed with secondary breast cancer? March 2016 confirmed.

Continuing on our Sunday series of educational blogs around secondary breast cancer treatments; this week we are highlighting Immunotherapy.

Have you had experience of this? 

Continuing our series of blogs on treatments you may have for secondary breast cancer, this week we’re focusing on Electrochemotherapy.

Do you have experience of this treatment?

Whole Brain Radiotherapy [WBRT] is given when cancer cells from another part of the body have spread to and developed in the brain. The aim of the WBRT is to help relieve any symptoms or prevent symptoms from developing and to slow down the growth of the cancer.

Radiotherapy uses high energy x-rays to treat cancer cells. It can shrink the cancer, relieve symptoms, and help you feel more comfortable.

Let’s find out more about Portacaths. Chemotherapy requires people to receive frequent doses of intravenous therapy over a long period; a portacath is a small piece of medical equipment that can make this procedure more comfortable for patients.

A PICC line - peripherally inserted central catheter line - is used to give someone chemotherapy treatment or other medicines. A PICC line is a long, thin, hollow, flexible tube called a catheter.

‘It’s in your brain’. As I heard my oncologist relay the results of my scan to me, I felt my blood run cold.

When I was told in late 2015 that I’d secured the last place on a phase 1 clinical trial, I didn’t in my wildest dreams think I’d end up still on that trial almost four years later. I had been diagnosed de novo (another unnecessarily complicated medical term which means ‘from the start’) in 2014 with Her2 breast cancer that had already spread to my liver, lungs and bones – then a year later into my brain.

We are looking at different types of chemotherapy - how you take it and possible side-effects - and then hearing from a patient about their experience. This week it’s Gemcitabine and Paclitaxel (GemTaxol)