Posted on 09/27/2021 11:46:54 AM PDT by nickcarraway
Cancer Without Chemotherapy: ‘A Totally Different World’ A growing number of cancer patients, especially those with breast and lung cancers, are being spared the dreaded treatment in favor of other options.
Dr. Seema Doshi, a dermatologist near Boston, thought it was a foregone conclusion that she would have to undergo chemotherapy when a cancerous lump was found in her breast in 2019.Credit...Lauren Justice for The New York Times
Dr. Seema Doshi was shocked and terrified when she found a lump in her breast that was eventually confirmed to be cancerous.
“That rocked my world,” said Dr. Doshi, a dermatologist in private practice in the Boston suburb of Franklin who was 46 at the time of her diagnosis. “I thought, ‘That’s it. I will have to do chemotherapy.’”
She was wrong.
Dr. Doshi was the beneficiary of a quiet revolution in breast cancer treatment, a slow chipping away at the number of people for whom chemotherapy is recommended. Chemotherapy for decades was considered “the rule, the dogma,” for treating breast cancer and other cancers, said Dr. Gabriel Hortobagyi, a breast cancer specialist at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. But data from a variety of sources offers some confirmation of what many oncologists say anecdotally — the method is on the wane for many cancer patients.
Genetic tests can now reveal whether chemotherapy would be beneficial. For many there are better options with an ever-expanding array of drugs, including estrogen blockers and drugs that destroy cancers by attacking specific proteins on the surface of tumors. And there is a growing willingness among oncologists to scale back unhelpful treatments.
The result spares thousands each year from the dreaded chemotherapy treatment, with its accompanying hair loss, nausea, fatigue, and potential to cause permanent damage to the heart and to nerves in the hands
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
My mother did the same, at about the same time.
and she is also fine today
Proton beam therapy
I had breast cancer and NEVER took any birth control anything!!
I am sorry. That is so sad.
Mine was caught early (stage1A), but genomic testing (Prosigna or Oncotype) scored the tumor high for likelihood of distant recurrence, so I took 4 rounds chemo. Didn’t have any idea stage 1 breast cancer ever had to take chemo. It was a shock, and it was brutal. Some things will never be the same because of chemo destruction.
Stage 3 Stomach Cancer survivor here. Took VERY strong dosage rounds of four chemo cocktail to begin with, THEN full stomach removal and 15 lymph node removals, then follow up four rounds of pill Chemo.
Clear pathology, clear scans 2 years and 3 month after diagnosis. Very strong and nasty side effects but the strong chemo is what saved me I believe. My Oncologist used a treatment plan out of Sloan Kettering protocols and my surgeon was an oncologic surgeon at MD Anderson. My tumor wasn’t just dead, it was gone completely.
The key is finding an oncologist that is always using the latest top protocols and treatment programs.
My wife was diagnosed with essentially the same a few years ago. Purely by luck it was caught early because her breast tissue always appeared fibrous in the mammograms. Fortunately the doctors seem to switch radiologists frequently so each time she had a mammogram a new radiologist would raise the issue of the fibrous texture. Out of caution they did further imaging and only through that they found a very tiny tumor. On the computer screen with contrast it looked pretty scary to me (and her) we could see the blood vessel feeding it. It was small though just looked big on the screen. She was offered lumpectomy but opted for mastectomy. She took the genetics tests and came back as unlikely to have a genetic proclivity but I don’t know how valid those tests are. Anyway she said “Get the whole gland out of me”. Can’t say I blame her for that.
So her doctors did the surgery. There was no nodal involvement. But they recommended radiation and some kind of hormone therapy, but she declined both. Went back recently (with covid lockdowns she waited too long imo but things were wacky everywhere) but fortunately so far they found everything clear and we hope and pray it will stay that way and she lives a long a fruitful cancer-free life.
And we hope and pray the same for you.
Thank God for that. My wife recently had the same experience (see post above).
Thank you very much. I miss her every day but it’s getting better.
Well, I’ll have to disagree with that absolutist statement. There are plenty of impurities and harsh, unnatural chemicals that we put on and in our bodies all our lives which I’m convinced at least set the stage for a predisposition to cancer. Lifestyle habits are also a contributor. But I suppose doctors are trained to divert all culpability from the patient in the interest of making the patient and her family “more comfortable” as well as to avoid any undue malpractice accusations.
It’s not a sin to disbelieve and challenge doctors. In fact, it’s a duty in many cases.
I actually I tried that on an acoustic neuroma at Loma Linda and had to do regular radiation several years later. It seems to have quit growing now but hearing in that ear is pretty much gone, of course it was really pretty bad after proton therapy too. I know Loma Linda was heavy into proton therapy on Prostate cancer, think they have pretty good results with that.
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