Breast Cancer

Rosienanna, I am happy for you too. Its good news and you must be relieved. I don't think I would be as brave as some of the women on here either.

Oh Rosienanna am SO relieved for you. What a happy and sunny day for you! Though as Ariadne and JessM say, you just steel yourself and get on with things if it DOES turn out to be cancer. I'm not sure if it is andrenalin or what, but you do seem to gain a bit of strength from somewhere, very essential and useful in comforting the husband and one's dear children - all of whom have heard words of comfort from us over the decades and are NOT used to having to worry about mum!

Such good luck with the other side - sorry you have to wait for that to be mammo'ed but cross fingers you get the same happy results.

That is good news!!! I was wondering.

bless you all !thank you xxxxxx

That's great news rosienanna, good luck with the other side too

Happy for you, Rosienanna! to you! xxxxxxx

just to say i got the all clear today! all the way through the tests i was getting negative ..possibly expect the worse! first things asked did you take HRT..Mmmm..i'm not out of the woods though..the other side now needs to be checked out ....so off to the NHS for that! silly me.. i thought as you are paying ..they would check both....i even had to ask her to go under the armpit with the scan..
thank you Ariadne and JessM xx

I don't think I was brave but I had to get on with it. I was in my 40s, boyfriend in HK, mother had motor neurone disease and DSs being a pain. I did have some supportive friends which made a big difference and a good team looking after me. Dealing with the emotional ups and downs more difficult than the surgery for me. But hopefully rosieanna it might not come to that.

I don't think I was brave, but faced with it all, you know you've just got to get on with it! There isn't really an option. I was terrified, I have to admit, then on top of that a sort of steely determination took over, which kept me going. Still does, I think, sometimes.

thank you JessM xx just the thought of an op i find scary...i'm not as brave as these ladies on here...i was when i was a lot younger!

Good call taking action. Take care.

Thank you JessM xx very comforting post! i will be going Wednesday for private tests,so i will know at the latest the following day! its the waiting,once i know i can bear the further waiting to be seen at the NHS clinic. the doctor said today that he could sent me as urgent ...but that would still mean a 2 week wait for results...
good idea about the shopping and wrapping! will do!
i will come back with the results,then look at this thread properly...

Oh not much fun having to wait 2 weeks for your appointment. Pain is not considered to be a warning sign is it, so maybe that will give your some optimism. And remind yourself that treatment for breast cancers is very often successful these days. Me, 3 aunts, a close friend - all had b cancer treatment over ten years ago and all still here. You have done the right thing in going straight to your doctor.
Suggest you busy yourself over the next week doing your christmas shopping (and then if you did have to have a lumpectomy you'd have them all bought and wrapped) or go and visit someone or something?

a very strange thing happened on Thursday night..i was reading a story of a young lady and her blog about her bc at aged 28....as i was reading ..i felt an itch and a very hot feeling in my left breast...as i gave it a bit of a scratch...i felt a large hard lump....i already have a fybrodemea in the right one...
went to the doctors on Friday morning and she agreed..it was a 'thickening' both breasts are very painful...very much so...(i do not self examine)
i am in my 60's and i am terrified! in the day i am not so bad..its the evenings..i think its a two week wait to be seen.
also strange, i will be going to a meeting on Tuesday evening to try and help save our oncology from being moved to a most unsuitable site ..a distance away...

Breast Cancer Campaign (only research BC) have established a tissue bank to help their ongoing research; this is a great way forward for this particular cancer. But it is all so scary, especially when you've been through it. Lots of people have their pet theories - so do I - but they are ours and suit us. Our cancers were ours alone, and one size doesn't fit all when discussing ideas.

Any research into ways of treating cancer is welcome, but like Jess I think that the solid paths of in vitro, animal, then double-blind human trials should be followed before a new therapy is unleashed onto the trusting public.

And full details should be available of these trials and of the long-term statistics of patient response - not just the miracle-cure successes. Cancer can return when it seems to have been banished, and it is not usually the primary cancer that kills, but the secondaries.

PHew Faye you have got a lot on your plate. Hope the birth goes well.
yes Barratt has I believe been targeted by disgruntled CAM practitioners who, unlike scientists, do not welcome criticism of their methods.
Every possibility is interesting in this field but all these folk seem to have done is put a proposal forward to JHopkins to fund some preliminary research. But still there is a clinic taking money from people!
We use many parts of the electromagnetic spectrum in medicine so there will probably be others discovered. But they need to be investigated methodically for efficacy and safety before you start opening clinics.

I think the advances in cancer treatments are going to come on the back of decades of fundamental research into cancer genetics. I do recommend The Emperor of All the Maladies (see my review) to anyone who wants to understand where we are with all this.It is a long read but interesting and not too heavy going.

hyper always means high and hypo low, they obviously got confused...

Two queries: (1) why is the word 'affect' used when it should, I believe, be 'effect'? and (2) why can't I find a definition of either hypothermic or hyperthermic?

The word 'twaddle' is swimming around in my sceptical brain at the moment. Like jess, I would want more hard evidence of a treatment's success before using it myself. Nothing wrong with placebos of course.

I think it's fine if we don't agree but it's good to know what else others are doing regarding cancer treatment.

I always found the radio waves interesting and am hopeful there will one day be a cure for cancer. Apparently they are doing research on radio waves at the John Hopkins School of Medicine. www.radiowaveclinic.com/

My mother was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer about two months ago and my father died from cancer of the prostate which eventually spread to his bones. My father really suffered and had radiation burns from the treatment and apparently if it is left, especially in older men the cancer is slow growing.

'A 10 year follow up study of men with early prostate cancer left untreated showed that 10 years later only 8.5 per cent of the 223 patients had died from prostate cancer. The survival rate of 86.8 per cent in the untreated group was nearly identical to a subgroup who met all the conditions for radical prostatectomy.' www.wddty.com/prostate-cancer-best-left-alone.html

I do feel very suspicious of pharmaceutical companies who make billions out of cancer treatment. Also Stephen Barrett apparently has had a lot of court cases judged against him. www.healthfreedomlaw.com/

I just received a phone call from my youngest daughter saying she is back in hospital and she has no idea if her baby will be now born in the next few days or on the 25th of this month when she is to have a cesarean. I think I best go and start packing. I am meant to visit my mother this weekend so my sister can have a break. I have been helping my SIL to look after my granddaughters all this week as my daughter is away in Melbourne with the year 10 drama students. I thought a grandmother's life is supposed to be a bit slower than this.

Faye asks whether the development that Jess refers to is along the same lines at radiowave therapy. The "About radiowave therapy" page on the site Faye has linked to says "Radiowave therapy is not a microwave treatment and nor is any therapeutic affect hypothermic."

I do wonder if they meant to say "hyperthermic" as that is what is mentioned in the microwave report. Hypothermic is extreme cold, not extreme heat, which is what one would associate with microwaves.

Faye - you are reacting very strongly. Do you have some personal connection to Holt.
Quackwatch is extremely well thought of by many (see the Wikipaedia entry) - except by those who he has exposed of course, who are on the attack.

There is a tried and tested route to getting new ideas accepted. You collect data, meticulously. You present papers at conferences and publish your results in journals. You go out of your way to share what you have discovered.

These websites just don't look right to me - they lack any evidence, unless i am failing to find it. Can you point me to a study that shows that this method works?

His qualifications and his reasons for starting Quackwatch are all on the website.

Dr Holt is not a quack, he was a leading cancer specialist before setting up his own clinic. What type of organisation is Quackwatch? Who is Stephen Barrett and what are his qualifications?

www.quackpotwatch.org/quackpots/quackpots/barrett.htm

www.canlyme.com/quackwatch.html

www.raysahelian.com/quackwatch.html

Well yes Faye, Quackwatch are dedicated to watching out for scams that defraud desperate people. The world is, unfortunately, full of them.
Journalists give uncritical air time to these folk on a regular basis.
The website says that the retired Dr Holt treated thousands of patients but there is no actual research to say what his success rates were or that it works. If it did, he would have published his results and oncologists all over the world would be using it.
They talk about research they are going to do but not anything that has been done and there are lots of vague misleading phrases.
It would not be hard to this method test on mice. There are thousands of experiments done on cancers in mice every day.

I just read an excellent book about cancer research which I have reviewed on Gransnet.

Quackwatch...I am sure they have all the information at their fingertips.