[Cindi Anderson]

I’m 3.5 years ago from getting TNBC from the vax.
I spent a fortune (about $150k) for treatments insurance wouldn’t cover. Probably way overkill but it was impossible to know how much was enough. But I am lucky; how many people can afford that?
I also am lucky that I have a concierge doctor who called around and connected me with a surgeon and oncologist who were open minded. When I presented the information I thought I had learned from the research, they agreed, and agreed that even though chemo is standard of care it made sense for me not to do it. Most of the people I met in the same situation were told they had to follow SOC or they would die, which was totally not supported by the research. And were told they would be fired as patients if they didn’t follow SOC. It is despicable.

[Jeff Gerber]

🙏 I love hearing success stories of people like yourself! ❤

[IMA-HelenT]

So sad that people are coerced at a time when they need open and honest conversations.

[Ken Jackson]

In response to your “quick question”, if I’m ever cursed with cancer, I will eagerly turn to fasting, “metabolic” and “repurposed-drug” approaches first. I would only seek the cancer industry’s help as a last resort. My fear is that all doctors in Maryland, and even my friends, will view such approaches with contempt.

[IMA-HelenT]

I have heard lots of people that chose this option say that they kept this decision from people that they knew would not support them. I know myself and my husband would be supportive of each other, and we have a few friends that would be very happy to help. Great to have all these free resources at our disposal.

[Cindi Anderson]

Unfortunately your fears are correct. I lost many close friends because of my treatment choices. Many people that don’t want to do standard treatment get emotionally blackmailed by their spouses or other family. “You’re just giving up and leaving us.” “You have to fight with everything you have.” As if there aren’t other ways besides killing yourself with poisons designed to bring to close to the brink. It’s a lonely journey, but at least there are many online groups now with like-minded people. I was lucky that my husband also felt strongly that chemo would kill me. But he also knew the decision of what to do was completely mine and mine alone.

[Cindi Anderson]

Here’s more:

We really have to stop lying about the risk and benefit of treatments. Stop using relative risk over absolute risk. Even the doctors don’t understand the studies. So many people are told “Treatment X improves your chances by 50%”, and they think that’s a lot. They don’t understand the absolute risk is often minuscule, and that even at that, to arrive at an average value in a study, some people get better but others get worse.

As an example, there are risk calculators put out by the major cancer centers for my cancer options (like Mayo). Despite being told by several oncologists that I would die without chemo and could be cured with it, the actual calculators based on my tumor characteristics showed the odds of living 10 years going from say 80% to 85%. I pointed hundreds of people to this calculator and most said they were doing it anyway because their doctor said it was a huge benefit and their only chance.

You hear so often “I have to do everything I can” without any understanding that those things you are doing can make you worse or kill you. It’s more a belief that all I have to do is put up with the suffering, then I will increase my chance of survival. Which is totally not true with pharmaceuticals. It IS true with things that actually support your body and immune system, but that isn’t even part of the equation for most people with cancer. Mainstream medical is still in the mindset of eating ice cream to maintain your weight, because diet doesn’t matter.

If cancer societies weren’t controlled by pharmaceuticals, they should be sorting through the studies and options and helping people understand risk/reward.

Lastly, it is very difficult to find naturopathic oncologists. This is very unfortunate. Insurance doesn’t cover them and many are not very good anyway. We need to train huge numbers of them, or train the actual oncologists. In lieu of having good help, there are huge numbers of people who are self-managing based on information they find online. This is not great either.