Reply to What happens if you choose not to treat cancer?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Breast cancer spreads to the bones, lungs, liver, and brain. Then you die. You might get 2-4 years but you'd get more and more painful and debilitating symptoms and it would be a miserable decline without any intervention. You don't just fall over one day after having lived life to the fullest up to that moment.

I don't know what a doctor would do. If you're in your 30s and not stage IV they're going to try to persuade you as hard as they can that you're making a terrible decision. You might get referred for a psych eval to make sure you're not incompetent or mentally ill. If you're legally capable of making your own decisions then HIPAA would prevent them from telling your spouse, but it's not like you're going to be able to hide dying of stage IV cancer. It shows.

I hope this is a thought exercise and not something you or someone else is actively contemplating. I'm 34 and just finished radiation for stage 1 triple-positive IDC yesterday. I finished chemo in January. I don't know what my future holds but I'm giving it my best shot and treatment has been bearable and not what I feared.[/quote]

what was your experience with radiation? did you have any bad side effects? How many weeks? where were you treated?  was it on your left or right side? Mine is on my left side so they said I'd have to hold my breath during the radiation to protect my heart. I am still deciding whether to do radiation. In my case it is being recommended but not strongly recommended since my cancer is not that aggressive.[/quote]

Yes, talk to your dr and more than one, if necessary. I’m the pp whose mom passed away from bc. My dh had a very rare cancer. Surgery and radiation. The radiation was on very thin skin and he had burns. It was also very tiring. He told the dr he was going to quit radiation bc he couldn’t do radiation and work. The dr said, no you are going to take time off of work and only focus on radiation. He made it through and 18 years later is still here. No recurrences. Kids were toddlers then and now are grown up. Cancer treatment sucks but sometimes it works.

Not PP, but you will get better information from a radiation oncologist because it depends on your breast size and where in the breast your cancer is (and tumor size). I met with one before I had surgery to help me decide which kind of surgery to do. I was worried about the left side issue too. She made me feel a lot better about it. She said they can often do prone positioning (depending on where the cancer is in your breast) to decrease heart and lung exposure. She also said that the technology they have now really reduces the non-breast exposure and most of the studies were conducted using older technologies. I still decided on a bigger surgery to avoid radiation, but it helped to talk to an RO about my specific case. She was in Bethesda. [/quote][/quote]

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