Stand Up for Yourself as a Breast Cancer Survivor

One of the hardest things to do when you are diagnosed with breast cancer is to do anything other than what other people tell you to do. It begins  with your first doctor’s visit and continues throughout your entire cancer journey. Everyone else has all of the answers for what is right for you, what you should do and what you should think. And it doesn’t take long to start doing what everyone else decides because you may not have the physical and or mental strength to do otherwise and because you will doubt your abilities to know what the right answers may be.

“No one else has a bigger stake in our care than we do on an individual basis.”Barbara Jacoby

It starts in the very beginning. You are directed to many doctors’ appointments and testing facilities and diagnostic centers for evaluation and recommendations based upon your type of breast cancer, how advanced it may be and what the experiences of your particular medical professionals may be. More than likely you will be told what you should do in order to address your particular situation and you will be most inclined to follow those recommendations. After all, you are not a medical professional and you don’t know a single thing about breast cancer other than what the experiences of someone else may have been so why would you not accept what you have been told?

The likelihood is that you do have medical professionals in whom you have great trust and will do as you have been advised. More than likely you will do some research concerning the information that you have received about your type and stage of breast cancer to see what may be the “normal” course of treatment and you will find that you seemed to have been correctly diagnosed and advised as to what you should do. However, if what you learn does not seem to be in alignment with what you have been advised, talk to your primary care physician about your concerns. (S)he may be able to alleviate them quickly and easily or you may find it necessary to request a second opinion.

You will find yourself being referred to new medical people in order to address your treatment. Hopefully, every one of them will be someone who respects you and that with which you are dealing. But, should you find that you are not comfortable with a particular doctor or do not feel confident in the treatment that you are advised that you need or in the way that your treatment is being administered, you should head right back to your primary care physician for a new referral.

I am speaking from personal experience and I am so grateful that I talked to my doctor and explained to her the encounter that I had. She not only understood but referred my to a new oncologist who turned out to provide me with an entirely different course of treatment that turned out to be right on so many levels. In addition, he also discovered another problem with a parathyroid gland that needed a surgery by paying attention to all of the results from my blood work that no one else had noticed. However, had I not asked for assistance in being referred to another doctor, I not only would have most likely not had the other problem discovered but also would have received a course of treatment for my breast cancer that was incorrect.

These are some of the reasons why I have become a patient advocate and that I encourage everyone to do the same for themselves. These are the types of situations where we can directly influence our health care in order to have a better outcome. This is the reason why we should continue to follow new treatments and care regarding the type of breast cancer that we have had. And these are the reasons why we need to stand up for ourselves and be responsible for our own care. After all, if we don’t, who will? No one else has a bigger stake in our care than we do on an individual basis.