Pain
A reader has asked whether she should be concerned about pain for which doctors have been unable to find a cause and have thus told her not to be concerned. I had a similar experience so will answer from a patient's perspective.
During my illness, I had significant pain that made breathing difficult. It began just minutes before radioimmunotherapy was going to be administered and I was not at my regular oncologist's office. Half way through treatment, I was still having difficulty breathing and so the nurse called the doctor in charge. She returned with a prescription for pain killers (which I never filled) and announced that the doctor felt that cancer had spread to my bones and that was causing the pain.
My husband and I were stunned. In the middle of a treatment that was supposed to save my life, we were told that I had bone cancer by a nurse whose doctor had never examined or tested me for the symptom!
This whole story is in my book, but the short version is that I hightailed it back to my own doctor who ran every possible test for the pain and still found no reason for it, and it took about four weeks to subside on its own. In the book, I summed it all up by saying, "Our mysterious bodies sometimes outwit even the best doctors - even the ones who actually try to find causes for symptoms."
So - I can only share my own experience with unexplained pain. It is difficult to have pain and to be told not to be concerned about it. The best way to find peace of mind is to find a doctor who will at least attempt to find a cause before dismissing it as nothing.
Betsy