Determining Your Breast Cancer Course of Treatment

With the growth of the Internet and just about every business and individual having their own website, the information highway has grown by leaps and bounds. You can search anything and everything and the results that you receive will provide you with such a volume of information that it can quickly become overwhelming. Of course this also applies to breast cancer and all of the treatments available these days that not only include those from the medical community but from the holistic and naturopathic arenas as well. So how does one know what is personally best when taking all of these options into consideration?

“Your best chances for a successful outcome will always be with the medical community who has been dealing with breast cancer for a long time but ultimately it is your life, your choices and your responsibility.”Barbara Jacoby

As with every decision in life, we have options and choices. Once an initial diagnosis has been made, you may choose to wait until after your first consultation with your doctor before making any decisions. Of course you may be perfectly satisfied with the advice that you received from your primary care physician or general practitioner especially if you have trust and confidence in them following a long-term relationship.

But if such is not the case, your decisions may be a bit more difficult. Your primary care physician now becomes an important part in referrals to other doctors that will become part of your team. There will be the surgeon, the oncologist and perhaps a radiation oncologist and a plastic surgeon among others depending on the course of treatment that will be designed as best for you. However, if at any point you are not happy with a recommendation or the medical professional, you should feel comfortable to do some research about alternatives to discuss with your doctor or to request a second opinion. If you are not 100 percent on board with each step of your treatment, your commitment to it and your recovery may very well be compromised.

If you are not in agreement with a medical recommendation that you have received and wish to pursue treatment in an alternative arena, it will be imperative for you to either receive recommendations from your primary care doctor or be prepared to do a thorough research job. The most important thing to remember is to find those who are educated and credentialed in the area of treatment that you wish to pursue. There are medical professionals who have trained in holistic and naturopathic treatment but you must be sure to confirm the information that you find and not just rely on recommendations and accolades that may appear on a site since it is easy to have a person’s family, friends and associates create those without any actual experience with the work of the professional.

Regardless of what you ultimately choose, you might want to consider having your progress monitored in order to determine if a particular therapy is working. If you always work in tandem with other medical professionals, you will be in the best position to change course if what has been chosen either by you or your doctor is not working as hoped. Remember that each person’s cancer is as different from anyone else’s cancer, just like your fingerprints, so what has or is working as treatment for someone else in the same stage and classification as yours does not mean that it will automatically be the best for you. Your best chances for a successful outcome will always be with the medical community who has been dealing with breast cancer for a long time but ultimately it is your life, your choices and your responsibility.