Thanks for the welcome, yes she has had CT scans, MRIs Pet scans, she gets alot of tests.
An no it was not really invasive the tumor was only about 1mm. very small, they thought stage 1.
I really do not know what anti-emetics are, if it is a medication, she only takes oxicodine around the clock for pain, nothing else, her onocologist told her to stop taking the tamoxofin because it was not working.
Her docs do know she is nausues but they say after she has chemo it will be better, and that even though she has lost alot of weight, it will not really hurt her.
I don't know it just seems weird and complicated that she did not receive chemo a long time ago, I also have a friend 36 who just had a double mastectomy no lymph nodes affected and is getting chemo as a precaution.
I'm sorry. I'm a nurse and sometimes I forget I use the techical jargon. Yes, anti-emetics are anti-nausea drugs (thanks, Laura). They're pretty standard when getting chemo as it does make you feel unwell. I'd bet the oxycodone is playing a part, also, as it has a codeine derivative in it which can also make you nauseas. A discussion with her medical team about it may help. They may be able to give her something to take for the nausea, and/or try something else for pain. When I received chemo I had a whole host of anti-emetics I had to take on schedule to keep the nausea at bay and I didn't feel great (I had a constant, nagging feeling of "agita" and extreme fatigue), but I never really felt nauseas.
Everyone is different. I didn't have metallic tastes (except for the day of chemo administration), but for the agita I tried lots of different things. One survivor friend at work made me a basket with "gingery" things, which had helped her, and chai tea, etc. I normally like ginger (I'm a huge lover of ginger ale) but they didn't sit well, and I had the tea a few times, but that didn't really sit well, either. Actually, nothing really sat well come to think of it.
I was trying hard to "make the calories count" by eating nutritious food, like the books said, but I think one of my favorite things to eat then was potato chips. Those always tasted good, LOL. (Amazingly, I still like them.) So try different things and see what works.
I"m glad she's had other scans. Sometimes if cancer's spread to one place, it's spread to others, too. If it's contained to the bones, that's good, as that usually makes it "treatable" (think of Elizabeth Edwards). There's this whole thing about "curable" and "treatable". Usually, cancer that's confined to the breast is considered "curable", which is why they're often pretty aggressive about initial treatment. However, things are changing with increased knowledge over the last few years about
how they're treating, trying to predict who
needs chemo (and who they think can go without), etc. They really take a close look at the circumstances of each individual case because no two cases are exactly alike.
To clarify, having nodes positive means there had to be a component of invasive cancer as it "spread" locally, ie it left the point of origination and "spread" to the nearby lymph nodes. (This was the case for me, and others of us here, as well.
It's sometimes called a local metastasis.) Unfortunately, spreading to the lymph nodes means the cancer cells were in the lymph channels - which are all over the body. This is what chemo is actually designed to treat - those "new" distant cells which may have gone elsewhere to grow later on; radiation is designed to clean up any cells in the breast and armpit/axillary area after cancer cells have been removed via surgery. (They can tell when cancer has spread from one place to another as they will find cells from the original place at the distant place, for instance, they might find breast cells in a liver tumor, etc.) *I should also say that this applies to breast cancer, there are other types of cancer that chemo is not recommended even if nodes are positive, etc, as those cells may be found to be extremely slow growing or such, but I'm mainly talking about breast cancer here.
It used to be that, with invasive cancer (cancer that's spread out of it's point of origination, which one can tell from biopsy - either it's encapsulated [non-invasive] or there's evidence that even a little bit of it is not encapsulated, ie there are cells that have gone beyond the point of origination [invasive]), chemo was almost always recommended. But as I said before, some of that's now changing - though my understanding of it is that this usually applies only to
node negative cases. I would certainly wonder why with numerous positive lymph nodes chemo was not recommended (maybe it was, but MIL didn't want it; or maybe they chose to treat it just with the tamoxifin since the tumor was small, who knows). The thing about it is, that this can happen even if you do get chemo, and/or even if the tumor is small and the nodes are negative, which is why this disease is sometimes referred to as "The Beast"; it's never predictable with absolute certainty and can come back even years down the road in either the breast and/or distant organs.
You'll see in the good link that Cheryl provided, that there are some pieces of information about each case that are "predictors" of outcome when decisions are being made about treatment. Those include size of tumor and +/- metastasis (Stage 1-4), lymph node status (positive or negative), and level of aggressiveness of the cancer, ie how different the cancer cells look from normal cells (Grade on a scale of 1-3, 3 being the highest grade, or most aggressive). They also look at whether the tumor was hormone related, or not, and other genetic factors such as Her2Neu status. Taking that information they look at how people who've had similar things did, with what type of treatment. They've got information now that spans several decades of modern treatment so they're pretty certain about what works and what doesn't. The end result is that they look to see who's died of things other than breast cancer and for those cases, they were considered cured. Fortunately, the cure rate is on the rise in the past decade or so as understanding of the disease, or diseases, really, has evolved.
Cancer that's metastasized, or spread to distant organs (bone included), is sometimes "treatable", but unfortunatley, not curable.
If one develops a metastasis (which I think we all worry about), the hope is that it is treatable. Some cases of metastasis spread unbelievably fast, like our own Beth's/MinnieM3 did. Those are the people who you hear of losing their battle in a very short period of time.
(And why there's controversy about routine testing, but that's a whole other post.) Other cases of mets move very slowly and are hopefully confined to a small area(s) and treatable over the long term.
OK, I'm officially rambling, but hopefully it's helped explain things a little bit. It's a really hard subject to discuss, as none of us want to even think about this possibility. But around here we kind of feel that knowledge is power, so we sometimes tackle the tough subjects anyway.
In thinking about this as I'm writing, Sharon, I think if it were my own mother (I know it's tough when it's MIL, but maybe you can share this with your DH), I would INSIST she get another opinion in a major cancer center with a top oncologist who specializes in treatment of metastatic breast cancer. She's a young woman with lots of years ahead of her and I'd want to be absolutely certain we were giving her the best treatment known at this point. HTH.
...I think there's no excuse to delay a referral (I mean, that should be among the day's highest priorities), but most docs wouldn't treat something beyond their scope of practice/range of specialty themselves.
Food, to me, though, never tasted metallic. One thing you have to be careful about with chemo is eating your favorite foods as you can develop "negative associations" with them. It happened to me. But they tasted fine at the time. 
Not sure if this is what you mean.
Keep us with you in spirit, Wednesday.
GAGWTA!!! 
...what breed is it?
GTAGWTA Good Morning Ladies
