What is your approach/"protocol"?

I use organic kelp flakes for iodine.  I sprinkle it on salads, in soup, in pasta sauce, etc.  They are organic and can be found at Whole Foods. 

Twa, if she really is your friend you will support her decisions about treatment.  I am certain she is devestated by the news of recurrance.  Perhaps you would have made different choices had it been you who was diagnosed but it wasn't you it was your friend.  She needs your support not your opinion or to think you are saying "I told you so" or your anger and negativity.  Your rants and opinions are not one bit helpful to your "friend" or to any of us here. 

Twa 

It's a sad day when adults reduce themselves to school yard tactics for the sick thrill of becoming cyber bullies on a breast cancer website. It would be such a disappointment to find that I have two faced friends like you who harbor toxic thoughts towards me behind my back.

Not sure what your hidden agenda is or why you are so bitter and hateful but your approach is neither productive nor appreciated. You have crossed the line from difference of opinion to hateful and bullying so hopefully after I report you, BC.O will put and end to your days as a text terrorist.

Carole 

It almost seems like people are angry at me because I bring news that someone who relied on alternative treatments has had a recurrence and likely metastasis.

If I reach one woman who comes here after diagnosis, scared of the prospect of conventional treatment and seeking an alternative, then it is worth it. The report-happy people who don't like the truth of the failure of alternative treatment can click away. The truth will not be squashed.

Lucy,  my "Troll Feeding Trough" is empty and I will not refill it.  No matter how much they stand on their little troll soap boxes and scream, I will not feed them again.

Thanks for the reminder.

Carole 

May I offer an outsider's perspective? It is this - holy overreaction Batman!

The definition of troll is NOT 'someone who disagrees forcefully with my cherished opinions'.

Twa offers a perspective you don't like, so you can tell her that (and if you look at her past posts she has indeed had cancer so she is allowed to be here, you know) but, 'text terrorist' etc seems more than a little extreme. If we are all honest we all sometimes disagree with our friends' choices and I don't see anything wrong with Twa venting a little here as part of her distress at knowing someone dear to her is ill again. 

Meanwhile, Twa, I am sure you know that you are going too far when you say that recurrence is 'guaranteed' if you follow alternative treatments only. You can't possibly know that. I am really sorry about your friend, but one person doth not a universal truth make. I am following a natural approach in lieu of Tamoxifen (I did do chemo and radiation) and feel comfortable that it will offer me as much security as the drug would. Nothing is certain in the cancer game, unfortunately.

This is just my opinion.

Edited to add that athea posted while I was composing mine, and her balanced response is NOT what I was talking about when I referred to overreactions.

Althea, if you are dedicated to an alternative way, you are not someone I'm really interested in reaching, if you read my post. You are not newly diagnosed, terrified of conventional treatment, and seeking information here.

Sakura, if you did chemo and radiation (and I presume, surgery too?), then simply declining Tamox is not seeking an alternative only approach. You embraced proven treatments. There's nothing wrong with not embracing ALL of them.

Poodle, I don't know the friend's exact pathology. She had a lumpectomy and I think SNB. The node was positive. She had a few radiation treatments and stopped. No chemo. She left the positive node in there.

She then decided to donate thousands of dollars to the "enrich the quacks at Hippocrates Institute fund" and undertook a macrobiotic diet. I love organic leafy green stuff too, berries and nuts, seeds, and the healthiest meats I can find. But she reeks from this inedible macrobiotic stuff ... which evidently is so horrendously bland that she has found it necessary to add garlic out the wazoo to add some semblance of flavor to it.

 ..... you are not someone I'm really interested in reaching... 

*********************

Attention all deluded newbies... Twa has spoken.    

Now can we hear some more protocols?  

I'm really not into alternative/complementary/holistic treatment of any kind. However, since  I refused the "mainstream" prescribed treatment, I'm basically following my own kind of "alternative" approach - which is doing nothing at all beyond lumpectomy.

So far, ( just 3 months short of 6 years since diagnosis), changing absolutely nothing about my lifestyle is working for me.  However, if I had agreed to take tamoxifen or arimidex and allowed post lumpectomy radiation, I would have never known for sure that doing nothing was a good alternative for someone like me. Worse yet, the medical minds that govern mainstream treatment decisions would be considering my recurrence free survival to date a product of those treatments. But of course, my lack of recurrence thus far is due primarily to a combination of favorable factors;1) good surgical technique, 2) the good fortune of having had a small, low grade, non-aggressive tumor and 3) the double blessing of already being in menopause at diagnosis. Nothing magical about any of it - very predictable. Hey, put me and the right number of others like me in any BC clinical trial and I can guarantee that we'll statistically help produce an overall favorable result - and the more of us the better - because we're not likely to reoccur anytime soon anyway.

There is not "a chance" of recurrence if one seeks only/primarily alternative "treatment." It is a guarantee.

To the person who made that statement above  -  you are making very generalized statements that do not apply to everyone with breast cancer and frankly, you don't know what you're talking about. Breast cancer is a very heterogenous disease and does not have the same prognosis and/or risk of recurrence in everyone who gets it.  The majority will not reoccur anyway regardless of what treatment they had or didn't have as long as the tumor has been excised with wide clear margins and good surgical technique has been used. Those that do have a recurrence are the exception, NOT the rule.

I have not had a recurrence in nearly 6 years and during this time frame, I know for a fact that whether or not I took alternative therapies, whether or not  I followed all mainstream treatment recommendations and whether or not  I did a combination of both alternative and traditional treatment...I would not have had a recurrence. 

Twa, you wrote: "....There is not "a chance" of recurrence if one seeks only/primarily alternative "treatment." It is a guarantee"

After talking so much and for so long in this forum, it is time, for the sake of your credibility, that you finally produce the evidence that you might have in support of such an arrogantly simplistic statement (if you should decide to do so, you will also have to destroy the evidence to the contrary, of course).

Rose ~  I'm type A, and the diet guidelines in "Eating For Your Blood Type" make sense to me and are in line with my natural preferences and my DH's, who is an O.  But I don't recall reading anything about people with type A blood having more cancer.  Carole, is that information from the same book, or just a theory or belief expressed by your doctor?     Deanna

Deanna, I believe it was my NatDocs conclusion based on the information in the book and my diet prior to being DX'd. I did get the impression that he believed that I was more susceptible because of my blood type. Thank you for asking for clarification. I will ask him more about this when he returns. It would be interesting to know which blood type is actually prone to BC.

Hmm, here is something I just Bing'd. 

March 10, 2009 -- People with blood types A, B, or AB are at higher risk of pancreatic cancer than those with type O, according to a new study.

Using data from two large groups of people, Brian Wolpin, MD, of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, and colleagues report finding what seems to be an association between blood types and risk of pancreatic cancer.

The study is published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

And this link to a study on BC and Type A's.

also this "Blood type A and familial breast cancer"

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/112682018/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0 

Calls for more study, very intriguing. 

Simvog, I am trying to find out more about this myself. I posted a bit about my regimen in a prior post. A thread focusing on this would be helpful as I am sure many of us are doing different things.

Carole 

I was told when I donated blood.

It is such an interesting theory. I looked through all of my recent bloodwork. Pages and pages of bloodwork. Not one mention of my blood type. Odd, isn't it? I do remember having a blood type card when I used to donate blood, but haven't in years and don't have the card any longer so I don't remember. I am going to ask the next time I get blood drawn if they can note the type of my blood on the results. I'm curious to see if I am type A.

I just saw a few articles re: this and find it interesting. I am A-.