Steps To Do After Your Cancer Diagnosis
Steps to do after a cancer diagnosis
1: Do NOT Panic! Give yourself a week or two to consider your treatment options. Your choices at this point are critical.
2: Ask the doctor questions about the cancer, what steps they want you to take, what are the side effects and long-term effects of their treatment plan, and if chemo or radiation is even successful on your type of cancer. Write down your questions and record their answers. Often emotions take over and you later you may not remember some of the information. Take a friend or family member with you to the visit to help keep you calm and ask questions that you may not have thought of during the visit.
3: Get a second opinion before you undergo surgery.
4: Try to find a holistic cancer specialist to find out what they can do.
5: Research your cancer and the surgeries or chemo they suggest you do. Learn everything you can from different educational sites. Know as much as or more than your doctor about possible new treatments or medicine. Many doctors do not have time to read about new possibilities in the treatment of your disease or cancer.
How do you design your alternative cancer treatment at home?
If you decide against surgery, chemo, and radiation then look into alternative cancer therapies. I do implore you to investigate your alternative medicine options.
Look up herbs or alternative medicine for your specific cancer.
Research Pub Med on your specific cancer and alternative therapies. An example is breast cancer and herbs or CLL and herbs. It will give you examples of research that matches that criteria. You can also put that search term into other search engines. You will probably have to go through the first 10 pages to find alternative medicine papers and articles. All the standard treatment information such as chemo will be found on the initial 5 to 10 pages. Don’t give up.
Tap user experiences on Facebook on cancer alternatives.
FB has several groups of patients using herbs and alternative therapies for their cancer. You can learn a lot from these groups. Remember that each patient and their cancer journey is different. The herbs and treatments they use may not be the best ones for your situation. Many of them are only patients like yourself looking for answers and trying a certain therapy.
That is why getting the support and experience from a holistic doctor is so important to save time and money. Ask if that particular doctor has experience in treating your particular cancer.
It is so important if you can see a holistic doctor who can guide you and help you choose a possible plan of action.
6: What if I have no money or resources to go to a holistic doctor?
Some people start a GoFundMe to pay for their cancer treatment. If you feel intimidated on setting up the GoFundMe page up, get help from a friend or family member. That can be quite successful.
See if you can afford a loan to pay for your treatment. Are there any family members who could help you financially?
Ask your community to run a fundraiser for your cause. It is not the time to rule out this kind of help.
There are some cancer clinics who can offer you funding through their clinic. If the clinic is out of the US, do your research on that clinic. Do not pay them money until you research it. Perhaps you know someone who has gone to a cancer clinic and can give you some input. Do your research!
I am going to end this here because my next Substack will continue this discussion on choosing an alternative medicine treatment plan once you have researched and talked to a holistic doctor. This is the step that intimidates people. There are so many herbs and alternative medicine therapies, how do you choose one?
All for today, Cathryn Freer, the herbladyisin