What Do I Do If I’ve Been Diagnosed With Breast Cancer?
The important thing to me is that women feel that they have received as much information as they want, and they understand their options. Different women have different priorities and these concerns also need to play into the equation. Some women would truly rather die than have their breasts removed; others want their breasts removed even when they don’t have cancer. However most women fall somewhere in between and just need to take time to come to a decision. Women are obviously not children and can make their own choices. A woman should never feel like she was railroaded into a decision.
I see too many women who are told they had to have a mastectomy because “it” was better. If a woman chooses to have a lumpectomy she will be recommended to have 6 to 7 weeks of radiation treatments. These treatments last about 5 minutes, but a woman has to go everyday — Monday to Friday. Most women have no problems. Some get very tired toward the end, however I’ve found that acupuncture helps this a lot. Some women are very sensitive to radiation and need to detox their bodies during and after. I usually recommend that women use some seaweed or kelp products. The breast skin can get severely burnt and women are encouraged to use aloe by mouth or on the skin. Most women’s white cell counts will be depressed for some time after radiation. I haven’t found a simple antidote for this. Radiation is recommended to decrease the chance of reoccurrence — found to be at least 30% in major studies. There does not seem to be any improvement in survival from the radiation.
Radiation is considered standard of care but is not mandatory. New techniques are being developed to deliver radiation during surgery. Breast cancer is now considered a systemic (affecting the total body) disease and treated as such. Surgeons once thought that they could cure breast cancer with the knife. This has been proved wrong except perhaps in very small cancers. Therefore, now more and more women are encouraged to see a medical oncologist to have some sort of adjuvant (additional) therapy, usually chemotherapy and/or hormonal therapy. Most of the information about the benefits and risks from these treatments can be found on the websites above.
Unfortunately we do not have the magic pill to cure or prevent breast cancer YET. Systemic therapies can usually stop the cancer from returning for some years and for many women, for life. However they don’t work for all women and some women are probably getting them unnecessarily. They are probably the best we have at this time, but keep tuned for newer ongoing research into vaccines, teleomerases, and tumor profiling. Again, a woman should feel she has been presented with the facts and statistics regarding the benefits and side effects. For some women even a 1 to 2% advantage is enough to do everything, for others the thought of chemo-brain is enough to outweigh any benefit. We are all different. Get as many opinions as you want and find a support team to bring with you!!!