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My Thoughts On Breast Radiation
A few of my coaching clients have asked me about my decision not to undergo radiation therapy on my breast after I finished chemotherapy.
Okay, so here goes.
It wasn’t an easy decision to make, I debated about it backwards and forwards for what seemed like weeks but was probably only about 10 days. The pressure on me was enormous from both my oncologist and the radiotherapy department to which he’d referred me.
But I wasn’t about to be rushed or bullied (yes, bullied – one person who called me from the radiotherapy department tried everything she could think of to get me in there for this treatment).
Here are my reasons for not doing radiotherapy:
1. We lived an hour away from the radiotherapy facility, so the traveling would have been grueling, two hours per day of just car time, 5 times per week for 6 weeks. Add another hour for the actual treatment and waiting for it. I still needed to work! Be that as it may, if i believed it would actually help me, I would have done it.
2. I hated the idea of the side effects I knew were waiting for me – fatigue, sensations of sunburn, possible injury to the heart, possible lung inflammation, possible nerve damage and even generation of cancer stem cells, although I didn’t know about that last item at the time. I just wasn’t willing to risk all of that, especially after already having been through 6 months of chemotherapy.
3. After visiting with a radiologist, I found out that for me personally radiation only improved my survival chances by about 3-5%.
I could see that my stress levels and quality of life were going to seriously suffer for 6 weeks.
Here’s what I did instead:
I had been studying natural medicine for several years. I knew of so many other things I could do that would enhance my health and not impact my sanity, my immune system or my working life as much as radiation would.
Here’s what I did (and I don’t say you should do this too – I am just sharing information here, you have to do what’s right for you):
- Every morning after a hot shower I spread across my chest two particular essential oils and every 3 days, I would change that pair of oils. Click on the link to see which essential oils I used. The hot shower helped open my pores so that the oils penetrated more deeply.
- I then went back to bed and utilized a specific healing visualization that brought white light into my body.
- I took in plenty of good nutrition – see my page Diet and Cancer for a list of the best ones.
- I worked on my immune system constantly. See my page 8 Ways To Build A Super Strong Immune System.
And that’s it. At the end of 6 weeks, I was positively glowing with health. I’m still 100% healthy.
As I said, I’m not saying you should do exactly what I did, you must find your own healing path. I just wanted you to know there are other ways of achieving health.
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Throughly agree, my decision exactly! The tiny amount of benefit in my case was not worth the risk of the side effects. I went on a hormone balancing diet, stress and emotional release program and switched to all organic on dairy products. As a Naturopath, I knew a lot about these topics, but needed more in depth info. I really appreciate you sharing your research with us. Such an encourage meant!
Carol, I’m glad you found the information encouraging. For me this was exactly the right thing to do. It might not be for someone else, but I did want to share it so that people know there are other avenues to approach with regard to healing from breast cancer.
Warmest regards,
Marnie