Stumbling upon and then reading this article by Harriet Bienfield was a major turning point for me. I realized that I was going to "defy" my doctors by refusing to do the radiation that they told me I absolutely must do, either before or after the chemo that they also told me I had to do. I forget now whether it was supposed to be done before or after the chemo. Doesn't matter, because I ended up opting to do neither.
More importantly, I realized that I had to begin questioning every treatment recommendation. I realized I had to take responsibility for making my own treatment decisions — for learning about my options, and for charting my own course of how I wanted to heal myself (whatever that may have meant, in the ultimate sense).
It's a long, two-part article. I urge you to read it all the way to the end. It is brilliant and brave, flying in the face of the myth that radiation increases a woman's chances of survival. Note that I do not say recurrence. I say SURVIVAL.
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