Everyone should do what is right for them and certainly follow their oncologist or surgeon's advice.....after doing their research. Get multiple opinions.
My memories are based on real live people that i knew, young ones at that........friends of my daughter and friends of our own.......people we sat with when they had their turbans on, watching their young elementary age children scamper around at birthday parties........being protected from what their 41 year old mom was going through. One had been a tall beautiful woman, professor at a great university, who had the charmed life, great husband, two kids, rural home with babbling brook.....everything she ever wanted.......struck down in the prime of life, treated at the best hospital in New England..........our daughter took her for her first wig and subsequent ones........our daughter's friend. She had that gene for breast cancer that targets younger women and is very aggressive. She had very potent chemo and radiation plus the breast reconstruction..........it got worse and the rest is history. She had a hospital bed in her living room..........as her hospital was about three hours away, a university teaching hospital.......so sad when I think of the happy moments. She faught it aggressively. All I can say is that there are some cancers that might be more mild than others.......or tumors that might be smaller and slower growing , than the young women we know who recently passed away after very aggressive chemo and radiation plus two or more surgeries, which do tend to turn a young family's world upside down. Another 40 year old passed much the same way, with the exact same treatment as the lady professor.....another intelligent woman.......with much to live for, a doting husband, no children......world traveler.
At the end...........when she could tolerate no more treatment, she just told her husband she wanted all the tubes pulled out.........she was tired of coming up and down the mountain into town for the treatments.......it had also spread to her brain, her adrenals, her bones and even her eyes.......very sad. Not just us, but everyone wonders if these two, in particular, might still be alive if they didn't have the harsh chemo and radiation treatments??????? Or, the breast reconstructions which does appear to spread some rogue cancer cells back into the blood stream. We have doctors and nurses as our friends. We've seen it all.....and heard it all. That said, everyone has to make their own ultimate decision. That said, we also know some elderly women who had breast cancer about 40 years ago when there was no chemo or radiation......they had simple surgery. Still alive. Perhaps it was a smaller tumor?
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