How to Relax with a Ticking Time Bomb

Hello bOObs Bloggettes:

I just had coffee with a friend of mine who is a 10-year survivor of Stage 3 breast cancer (BC) — Yayyyy!  I exclaimed when she told me. But then the look on her face changed. She was anxious because she was afraid the cancer might return. Let’s look closer at her story.

My friend was anxious of her cancer returning even though she’d had a mastectomy of the breast with the cancer and a prophylactic mastectomy of the other breast, followed up by intense chemotherapy and radiation — Medicine’s  whole Standard of Care ball-of-wax. I knew personally why she was afraid. Three dear friends of mine all had their cancer return after 10 years, 15 years and even 30 years of remission. Remission must feel like having a ticking time bomb in your body, I thought. Kind of how my late husband and I felt waiting for his lower stage tumor to turn to Stage 4. So how can women try and abate these feeling of anxiety?

It dawned on me that my “Blog on bOObs”  is largely about empowering women — but in different kinds of ways with regards to breast health. This includes: Giving women the information they need before they go in for BC screening; helping women understand the choices they have to prevent a BC from returning OR even preventing a cancer to grow in the first place.

That’s what this blog is really about in a nutshell, I came to realize: Empowerment through knowledge.

When I started down the documentary film road 6 years after the passing of my husband  and losing these three dear friends to BC in two years time, I had come to understand this: We are all sitting ducks, if you will, awaiting a chronic disease diagnosis like cancer — a really scary way to go through life, I thought, like standing around with a ticking time bomb. Unless we do something about it first!

After I watched Ty Bollinger’s docuseries on “The Truth About Cancer” (https://thetruthaboutcancer.com), I felt empowered. After I watched all the interviews of alternative doctors explaining their treatments and (more importantly) patients explaining their experiences of reversing diagnosed cancer, I felt like the hopeless and frightening feeling of waiting around for a possible cancer to invade my body had dissipated. It was a wonderful feeling. I had a just-in-case plan in place. I wanted others to have this feeling too by expanding on the enlightenment of what Ty had started, but with my spin as a scientist on it.

Two of my three girlfriends with BC didn’t want to hear me prattle on about non-conventional cancer therapies when their cancers returned. However, the third friend was already plugged into alternatives. In fact, when her cancer returned she made an alarming disclosure to me: She had been in remission as long as she had been doing alternatives and taking good care of herself. As soon as she let down her guard, relaxed a bit, and halted her alternative routine, her cancer returned as Stage 4, she said. My friend was a big IBM executive and quite pragmatic, so I didn’t doubt her word for a minute.

But back to the first friend mentioned and her anxiety of falling out of remission. She was looking for something else she could do other than just getting blood tests every six months ordered by her oncologist. She asked what I would do if I were in her shoes. I told her the story about reversing my suspicious thermography findings in my breast through lifestyle changes (see previous blog on this) and she seemed interested. So I suggested she consider getting an ultrasound and thermogram of her chest (even though both breasts were gone) to look for any new bumps or inflammation, which would alert her that something new might be brewing. She could then take the necessary steps to change her lifestyle and head to a naturopathic doctor, and/or head to her conventional doctor to seek a diagnosis and treatment. And if instead the thermogram and ultrasound tests were clear, then great! She could rest easy.

She was also considering getting a genetic test to see if she carried something like a mutation in the BRCA gene (see previous blog) as her mother had had BC. She wanted to alert her daughter if she did. I agreed this certainly was an option — but pointed out it was probably only helpful if the daughter thought she’d act on any findings, such as a prophylactic mastectomy. Otherwise, it would just worry the heck out of her daughter the rest of her life. A ticking time bomb…

One important thing I’ve learned on my journey since my husband’s death is that everyone else is on their own journey. Some people, like my late husband, are more comfortable with following the White Coat  of conventional medicine, while others are immediately drawn to non-invasive, non-conventional medical therapies. It’s really the choice of the patient.

But there’s no harm in using the non-invasive and non-radiative tools of thermography and ultrasound to help reduce the stress of waiting for a possible lapse in remission. In fact, it will most likely empower a patient because they’d be doing something proactive and not just sitting around waiting. Look at them as tools in your preventative toolbox along with lifestyle changes as an action plan.  Patients can see not only what’s in their blood lab work (such as “markers”) through their doctor’s report, but they can also see if there’s something physiological going on in the breast and possibly lymph nodes — and even if there’s inflammation in the teeth that might lead to BC (this is another fascinating topic I’ve learned about and one I’ll blog on in the future: Biological Dentistry.)

As this is a bit of a departure from my other blogs, please let me know in the comments section below if this was helpful and what else you’d like me to blog about.

Blog at you soon, thanks for reading and helping to spread the word!  (Please see the “share” links below.)  And we’d love to hear comments from you! 

Stay healthy,

Megan

Megan Smith, M.S.
Director, bOObs: The War on Women’s Breasts

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