Roller coaster ride

I hesitated to post this here, but since I'm aiming at honesty I've decided to post it. I originally wrote this for a post on YSC to get consolation from my breast cancer support group.

Every woman I've met (mostly online) has freaked out about mets at one time or another. I guess it's my turn to freak out...I'm still on the roller coaster ride.
----------------
Okay, it's my turn.

So far I have done a very good job of not freaking out over things. Up until now, I have not spent time dwelling on the idea of mets. Until now, I have not wondered if each little ache or pain was mets.

Sigh. I knew this would come but that doesn't make me any more prepared for it!

So it's my turn to freak out. I have had some pain in my lower back/hip area for a few months. I had chalked it up to being active and taking up running and having lots of surgeries in my upper chest/lat flap areas, so I had decided not to stress. I brought it up to my oncologist, casually, and she said, "No wonder you have a bit of pain every now and then - look at how hard you push yourself!"

But then last night I decided to have a bubble bath. I was just about to submerge myself under water, and I raised my hand to smooth my hair from my face, and suddenly I felt searing pain. I've had little tastes of that before and thought they were muscle spasms or something, but this was mind-numbnig. I waited for it to pass. I held still for 15 minutes, hoping that it would go away. Finally, I called to my husband (who was downstairs) to come up, and by the time he heard me I was sitting there crying. I couldn't move at all without searing pain in that area - sort of right above my butt, low back, on the right side. It took us 15 minutes to figure out how to get me out of the tub - I was terrified that if he lifted me the pain would be tooooo awful.

It took about 15 more minutes to get me out of the tub, dried off, and into the bedroom. Ryan helped me get in PJs, and got me some Flexoril and Vicodan (leftovers from my last surgery) and I was finally able to get into bed, where I sat without moving for another hour before the pain went away enough for me to sleep.

This morning the pain isn't unmanageable, but it's still there, and more than it had been in the past couple of months.

Now I can't make the thought of bone mets go away. I called the onc, who is out of the office today, but they'll call me back within the day. I've asked for a bone scan.

Can anybody talk me off the ceiling? Can you either assure me that this is not bone mets and a lucky pinched nerve or something, or convince me that if it's bone mets I will still be fine and live to be 100? Please?
-------------

One of the girls on the YSC site recently had something like this, but in her neck. It turns out that she "just" has a broken neck. Everyone has been cheering her and saying "I'm so glad it's nothing" and "Thank God it's a broken neck and nothing worse" and the like. She needs surgery, but the sentiment is understood: as long as it's not permanent and won't kill you, WHO CARES!

The flip side is that I know several online people who were recently diagnosed with mets (metastases: the breast cancer moved into other organs or bones)...one day stage II, the next, stage IV.

Ugh.