A diagnosis of breast cancer, whether it’s the first one or a recurrence is mind-numbingly frightening.
If it’s the first time you’ve heard the words, “You have cancer.”
It’s not only frightening but it sends you into a world of language, treatments, and experiences that you have no idea how to understand or manage.
In this episode, I’ll clear up some of the fear and confusion around how to handle a new diagnosis.
This isn’t about treatments, drugs, or supplements, but the mindset shifts that are so important to care for yourself when faced with a life-threatening illness and difficult treatment decisions.
This is the advice I wish someone had given me when I had my first breast cancer diagnosis.
Referred to in this episode:
Download – Four Steps to Take After a Breast Cancer Diagnosis.
Metabolic Terrain Trained Doctors
American Cancer Society Reach to Recovery
Books:
The Breast Cancer Survival Manual
The Metabolic Approach to Cancer
Follow me on Social Media:
Read the full transcript:
0:00
You're listening to better than before breast cancer with the breast cancer recovery coach. I'm your host, Laura Lummer. I'm a certified life coach, and I'm a breast cancer thriver. In this podcast, I will give you the skills and the insights and the tools to move past the emotional and physical trauma of a breast cancer diagnosis. If you're looking for a way to create a life that's even better than before breast cancer, you've come to the right place. Let's get started. Hey, there, you're listening to Episode 344 have better than before breast cancer with the breast cancer recovery coach. That's me your host, Laura Lummer. Very happy to be here with you today. You know, I'll share something with you. I often get messages, emails, direct messages from women who have been diagnosed, newly diagnosed diagnosed with recurrence. Sometimes I get requests to talk about certain topics on the podcast. And sometimes I get asked whether or not I have certain episodes recorded that they could refer to for instance, if you're newly diagnosed, is there an episode that I could listen to you to help me? And recently, I've had several women reach out to me and ask if I had an episode about what to do when you're diagnosed. And oddly, I don't really have one that's specific to that. And I guess it's not oddly because I never when I started this podcast, it was really about the space after breast cancer, right? It was about breast cancer recovery and what to do when you're released from treatment. And the podcast has evolved to be something about like, how do you create a life that's better than before breast cancer. So it's never really been about treatment, or what to do in treatment. But because this is mental health awareness month. And because I can't think of many things that would have a huge impact on your mental health as hearing a cancer diagnosis. And because it's not just the first diagnosis, but it is the diagnosis of a recurrence. And the non linear journey after having a recurrence of different scans or like more cancer pops up here and cancer went away here. And this might be new, and this might be old, and all of the information we get how do we process that? And what do we do? So first of all, this is not medical information, I am not giving medical advice of any kind, I'm only going to share with you based on my life experience, my education and training, and the women that I've worked with who've been diagnosed with breast cancer, that if I could go back to 2011, and get that diagnosis, again, what I would suggest would be the first steps I would take to care for myself to manage how to process this diagnosis and understand it. Now, I think that initially, when you get a diagnosis, it's just shocking. It just it just rocks the earth right under your feet, right. And so my first bit of advice is to know that you have time, and that you should take some time. And I don't mean like a year and I'm not going against what your doctor is saying if your doctor says you need to start this tomorrow, you need to listen to your doctor, right. But basically what I'm saying is in lieu of Doctor sayings, I've rarely have heard a case for doctors, like you need to start this right now. We don't get cancer overnight, right? It it takes a long time to develop. So if it's a new diagnosis, and oftentimes those are DCIS. So in situ, stage one, stage two, sometimes stage three, fortunately, not a lot of us are newly diagnosed with stage four being our first diagnosis. But obviously that's going to be more urgent and more serious. But in the earlier stages, the DCIS or stage 012. Again, knowing that this didn't happen overnight, that sometimes I mean, there's projections that say seven to 10 years cancer has been forming inside of us before it's palpable or detectable on imaging.
4:19
And when we hear it, we want it out. Right. I think that's one of the first things is just get this out of me. We're very scared. And we just want it out. And I think that that mentality often leads us to making decisions that we're not 100% Confident in, maybe we don't even understand. And so that's an important thing. I think realizing that it's okay to take some time and maybe that time is a few days. Maybe that time is a couple of weeks and usually from what I hear now, I mean it usually is a few weeks before people get into some kind of active treatment after a diagnosis. Was there a period of time. And maybe that's an important thing to address here, that it's a period of time. Typically, it's a process between getting the diagnosis, getting the oncologist appointment, getting the plan of action, getting the appointments to start treatment. And we can easily tend to freak out during that time, because as I said, we're just focused on Get this out of me. And it's going to feel like an eternity. But know that you're not alone in that. And I like to think back and at least in this one piece of it and think these doctors see cancer all the time. And so I think that sometimes we might feel like they're not acting urgently enough, because we're so scared. But I think it's important to have a little bit of trust here and know that they do see this all the time. They do deal with this all the time. So they know that we have some time, right? That it's very unlikely that it's going to go to from stage one or two to stage four overnight or in a few weeks, right? It's all it's going to take time. So what I would suggest is that you really take that time for yourself, that an important thing is to tune into yourself and ask yourself what you need. And I don't mean what you need in terms of surgery, lumpectomy, mastectomy, chemotherapy, what do you need to support yourself? As you move forward? In dealing with whatever treatment plans you decide for yourself? So I mean, taking a break, asking yourself sitting with yourself, if you're married, or you have a life partner in your life, maybe spending some time with that partner and thinking about what kind of space do we need to create, to support your ability to heal, to make decisions? And to deal with treatments? Does that mean help with children? Does that mean time off work? What will that look like? Does that mean? Whatever it means in any way that will impact you? How will we deal with this? Not like how do we keep things as normal as possible? Now, that may sound weird. And especially you know, when I was first diagnosed, I still had two of my four children at home. My youngest was 12. My oldest was 17 at the time, or the oldest one at home was 17. And so it may sound weird to say don't try to keep things normal. Because I think as a parent, that's one of our first thoughts is how do I keep things as normal as possible for our kids. And I gotta say, kids are not dumb. And especially kids these days, I mean, I have a 12 year old granddaughter, I have an eight, a 10 year old. These kids know everything, they don't miss a beat. They're intuitive that hear conversations. And I honestly think that one of the worst things we can do is not be transparent. And I mean transparent in a way that whatever age your children might be, that it's something they can process, right, we have to think about how we disclose information. But kids know when we're hiding things, even older kids, even younger kids, they know when we're hiding things. And I also think it's a disservice to us, the person who has been diagnosed with cancer, to think you've got to do whatever it is compromised your energy compromised your time in whatever way it is to keep things normal, as if you didn't just get a cancer diagnosis. Because that's adding a tremendous amount of pressure to yourself. And I think sobbing and really allowing yourself to go, Holy cow, I have cancer in my body. I have a serious illness. a life threatening illness, in whatever I've been doing up into this point in my life is what led me here. I need to stop. I need to think about what's going on in my life. what's working, what's not working, how am caring for myself, how I haven't cared for myself, and where your power is now. What tools are available to you, what information is available to you what support is available to you. And I don't mean just an oncologist and a breast surgeon I mean, a whole team, what is available to you because there's so many options. And when I was first diagnosed, I didn't realize that, of course I'd heard about Of course, I knew about eating well and eat good food and you know, cut back on sugar and all that of course. But there's so much more than that, that you can do to support yourself and to support the efficacy of the treatments that you choose to do. So I think really stopping and evaluating these thoughts that come to mind of weekend. You know, we got to keep things normal. I can't let it look like you know, my life has changed. I want to keep work normal. I want to keep kids normal. I would encourage you to really consider why I that's important. I think that that's often a very fear based decision. We're afraid of people worrying. And let me be the one to tell you, they're going to worry anyway. They're going to see you can't hide when you're going through cancer treatment. And why is it important working through those thoughts of if you are at work? Why is it important for you to maintain a perception for other people? And are you putting that ahead of your need to support your own healing, because it requires space, time, effort, energy planning, to take care of yourself, and make the changes that support your body's ability to heal. So the very first thing I would say, is stop. And if you are at work, take a few days off, take a week off, call out sick, whatever it takes, take some space to first process, the grief and the shock that you're going to be experiencing the thoughts that you have whatever they are, and, and try to figure out how do I hold space for what I need? What do I really need here? Now, we tend to go into researching the cancer itself. So if you get a diagnosis of DCIS, of stage one, and stage two of triple negative hormone, positive, her to positive inflammatory breast cancer, all those things we want to go into, we want to research the type of cancer we have, and the type of treatments in standard of care that are available for that. And I think that's a great idea.
11:37
It's important to make an informed decision. Where we can go down a rabbit hole here is asking people for Worst case scenario, getting too much information on overwhelming ourselves, for instance, going into a bunch of Facebook groups of women who've maybe had a similar diagnosis to yours. And asking about the worst things that happened to them, asking about the scary things that happened to them. Those are planning a lot of seeds that I think are unnecessary. I think part of what you need and how to take care of yourself is deciding how do you want to feel during this process? Because it's already natural that you're going to feel scared? Do you want to keep searching information that is going to scare you more? So that you make more fear based decisions, and you live with a tremendous amount of stress? So I think there's a difference between researching what is this diagnosis I just got? What does it mean? How will it potentially affect my body? What treatments are used for it? What are those treatments? Do? What are those treatments mean? I think that that's important information. But then as you take a step further and ask people, How sick did you get? How bad was this, I'll oftentimes deal with women who aren't doing any kind of treatment, because they're so scared because they've heard such horror stories about what things might do to them. And I think that that is a shame. If you know you need treatment, and you're not doing anything, because you're scared because you've looked at too many scary stories. That's a shame. Like I just want to reach out and hug you and say, Listen, we got to back this up and take it one step at a time. And we need to know that everyone has a different experience. And again, there are many, many things you can do to support yourself and make that experience as least traumatic physically, emotionally, mentally, as it needs to be. So I would suggest reaching out to a coach, a therapist, someone who has had a similar there's mentors, like the American Cancer Society as breast cancer, there's breast cancer angels, I think it's called. There's the organization that I volunteer with women guiding women, there are lots of organizations out there that have women who've been trained to be mentors to guide you through and why I think that's important, is because there's a difference between someone who's been trained to support you, versus someone who's just had the same experience, and who may or may not be in a really healthy emotional state. So the difference from that is that you can bring your questions, your concerns and your fears to someone who's been properly trained, so they can hold space for you, so that they're not just going to spew their story or their bad experiences or their negative thoughts. But they're going to hold space for you to hear you to understand your fears to understand your concerns, and be able to ask you the right questions because the answers are inside of you. And no, it seems like it won't be at the very beginning when we're newly diagnosed, whether that's with first diagnosis or a recurrence. We want answer we want someone to just tell us tell knew what to do to save my life. But honestly, you got to check in with yourself on what resonates with you, we get information from outside of us that we get answers from within us. So I would say absolutely reaching out for support to someone who a has been through breast cancer experience, the B has been trained to support and hold space for other people also experiencing that. All right, because we really have to filter negativity. I think that I feel safe saying, we can expect to hear scary things from people if we're not careful. If we're not careful who we share this diagnosis with, you know, it's very common for people to hear your diagnosis, and immediately tell you, my mom died from that my aunt died from that my friend's sister died from that. I don't know why they do that. I think they don't understand, right, someone who's not had a diagnosis, here's your diagnosis and shares, someone they love that died. And so that scares you more. And I don't know why that happens. I think they're just trying to be empathetic and relate or say I get it, I knew someone of my life has been touched by cancer. But the way that common comes across does not feel good to someone who's newly diagnosed, right? It's like, Well, shit, is that gonna happen to me, and it can really put you in a spin. So I wouldn't say, Don't share your diagnosis, because you have to do what's right for you. But I would say think about where you share to make sure you're in a safe space or in that time that you take for yourself after your diagnosis to process what this means to you. What you need for it, in that time is a great time to decide on what boundaries you will have around your treatment. And that means How will you manage your time? How will you manage your communications, people who love you are going to be concerned and they're going to want to know. And so you're not going to have a lot of energy, if you're going through breast cancer treatment, it takes its toll emotionally, physically, mentally. And your number one job is to support your health and healing. So what boundaries do you need, for example, I said to my family, I don't want you all calling me asking about cancer and cancer treatment, I will put a thread together, I will share with you openly and transparently when I'm going through my treatment, but I only want you to ask me how my healing is going. Right? I know you're gonna be scared, I know, you're gonna have fear that you guys have to get support through your therapist, your coaches each other, and process that fear, I can't hold space for your fear. Because I already have too much going on. Right? I have to hold space for my healing. So that was a really important boundary for me. And especially when it's new, because it's raw. Now maybe as time goes by, it's easier. Like right now I could share my stage four diagnosis with absolutely anybody. Because regardless of what their response to me is going to be I'm solid and very confident in myself. And my treatment choices in my belief system. I'm super solid. So regardless of people say, you know, react with shock, which they often do, like, oh, no, I'm so sorry. You know, I'm not, I don't let it affect me. But it's taken time. And it's taken processing, and it's taken work. So you've got to decide, what are you capable of handling, and in that establish some healthy boundaries for yourself. Because if you know, I'm not really going to be strong enough right now to process other people's fearful thoughts. That's really important. So who do you trust with those who are your champions, that's what I call them in my four pillars of breast cancer recovery, we've got to decide on our champions. And that means I can come to this person, and they're gonna have my back no matter what. I think another thing that's important as we're talking about that support is that knowing you're about to go into a world that's going to have a lot of foreign language. And I don't mean a different language other than what you speak, but I mean terminology, you're going to hear a lot of terms that you're maybe not familiar with. And when you're in fear, and you've been newly diagnosed, and you're in shock and you're still trying to figure things out. It's very important that if you realize, I don't know that I'm going to be able to take in all the information I might get from this doctor or this surgeon or whoever it is you're consulting with. Have someone a champion with you. Whether that is a spouse or life partner, a sibling, a parent, a dear friend, or someone you hire to go with you, I don't know. Have someone with you because what you hear in your appointments may not be what's being said. Right? You may be filtering it still through fear and shock. So having someone there even if that's not possible for you asking the doctor, is it okay if I record this, because I don't think I'll be able to take everything in or bring in if it's not okay, I can't imagine why not, it's your medical history. So as if you can record it on your phone, or bring a notebook with you and tell the doctor because here's the thing, doctors are in a hurry, they don't have a lot of time, they're going to try to sell you as the information as fast as they can. You've got to remember, this is your life, this is your treatment, and you're paying that doctor. So what's really important is that you take the space you need to take that you realize, if you think, or you know about yourself, that you're intimidated by physicians, by people who you perceive to be in positions of authority. If you feel like you will hold back on your questions because of that mindset, or you don't feel confident or you don't even know how to use the right words or terminology that they're using. bring someone with you. Okay, bring someone with you. Who knows that? As Can I have a nurse that in here with me and take notes, do something to make sure you're getting this information? Correct? And that you are asking the questions you need to ask. There are lots of great books out there. And there's a book written by Dr. John link. And it's I think it's called the breast cancers guide to survival or survivors guide. I'll link to it here in the show notes for this episode. That book has a lot of great questions. He is a he's been in the breast cancer world forever. And he's kind of known as a an authority on breast cancer kind of known, he is known as an authority on breast cancer in Orange County, where I live, he had the breast center, I'm not even sure if it's still there, because I didn't get treated there. But I did go there for a second opinion. And he did write this book. And it's got not only a lot of great direction, as far as helpful nutrition, and it kind of does some myth busting about things people say do and don't do after breast cancer diagnosis. And he's got a lot of good questions to ask the oncologist. And it's very detailed. So again, thinking, take these questions with you. And if that doctor is acting like they're in a hurry, you get to say, I need answers to these questions, right, you get to take up space. And if you don't feel comfortable or confident in your ability to do that, get a champion. Take them with you. Okay, someone who's your advocate, someone who's going to take the time in the space and ask the questions that are important. So get that information, get your questions answered. And again, going backwards in that space you take for yourself right after a diagnosis, when you can get there to thinking about what are my questions, it's good to have a resource like the Breast Cancer Survival Guide, or that kind of book where you can get good questions and another doctor saying, hey, find this stuff out. But it's also good to just ask your own questions of the physician or again, of someone who's had the experience and is trained in helping to communicate that in a way that doesn't scare the shit out of you. Okay? I think an important thing is to hold this idea close to you. Cancer does not have to be a death sentence. We get so scared because culturally, for for a long time, it was a death sentence. Right? Cancer was considered incurable and treatable. We have so many advancements, especially when it comes to breast cancer. You know, I recently a few weeks ago did a show with several other cancer survivors. And a couple of them are pediatric cancer survivors, or in treatment for a specific type of cancer that's considered or treated with what's considered pediatric medicine. And I was shocked to hear from them how archaic some of their treatments were, and how little money goes into research and development for what is considered pediatric cancers. I was shocked. And at the same time, I was shocked, I felt extremely grateful for the amount of money and research and everything that's gone in to moving the dial a little bit more forward when it comes to breast cancer treatment. So even with the stage four diagnosis, as I have and as I've lived with for three and a half years. It doesn't have to be a death sentence. I meet people who had so stage four cancer diagnosis can be anything from the cancer, you know, is no longer in your breast it's in a different tissue. So maybe there's a spot on a bone in on your collarbone, let's say. So stage four could be anything from a spot on your bone to what I had, which is throughout my bones and it can be through other tissues. Some women get diagnosed, it's on their pancreas, it's on their lip. Right, so stage four can have a full range of what stage four means from one distant spot to your body full of cancer. And even then, it does not have to be a death sentence. I had a very advanced stage four diagnosis. And I said here today, three years later, dealing with one inflamed lymph node that we're not even sure is inflamed because of cancer. Okay, so I think it's super important whether this is a first diagnosis and your stage 012 or three, or it's a recurrence, or it's a first diagnosis in your stage four, there are things you can do to support yourself. There's a tremendous amount, a huge toolbox available for you, both through standard of care, and through complementary care. And by complementary care. I mean, integrative medicine, the things you can choose to do between stress reduction practices, breath, work, nutrition, exercise, fasting, hyperbaric oxygen, high dose, vitamin C therapy, mistletoe therapy, there's so many tools available. And it is a great time to know and to live, I guess, like, the longer we live, and I say this to myself and other people who have advanced cancer diagnosis, he says, Every week, we live longer, there could be a new discovery that could save our lives, right? So we don't have to worry about will this save my life forever? But will this support my healing right now? That's kind of how I think of it right. So I have a whole protocol that I follow that integrates standard of care, and complementary care, integrative approach to cancer. And all I think is a little more time, a little more time, because the more time I'm here, and the more time I'm alive and doing well, the greater the chance, something even better is going to come along for me. And I hear about things on the brink of being not published, but on the brink of being released all the time. So it's just like, Okay, let's not think about a death sentence is thinking about what do I do today to support my ability to heal? What do I do today to keep myself feeling as well as I can possibly feel as I go through whatever standard of care treatments you choose to do. And not only that, but I do have clients who choose to not do any standard of care, and they choose just to do alternative treatments. So here's the difference. Complementary or integrative medicine means that you are doing lifestyle medicine, right, alternative treatments, to standard of care, but you're incorporating them with standard of care standard of care, meaning surgery, radiation, hormone therapies, chemo therapies, that's all standard of care. So you're doing those like I do, and you're incorporating the other stuff, like fasting and staying in ketosis and using supplements and doing all those things, right? That's Complementary and Integrative. Alternative means when you forego the standard of care treatments, and you only elect these other treatments, which can be mistletoe, hyperbaric oxygen, ozone, all so hyperthermia, there's lots and lots, those also are really strong treatments. And in the clients that I have that choose only alternative care treatments, it is still extremely taxing on their system. Don't fool yourself into thinking, because something isn't a pharmaceutical treatment, that it's going to be easy to go through. Because that is not always the case. You still need to make sure you're holding space for yourself. And you're not trying to push through an overdue, you're not trying to keep life as normal as possible, because it's not normal anymore. Now you're facing a life threatening illness. And it's time for you to look at what needs to change in your life to support your ability to heal. All right. We don't want to keep it normal the same way it was that led you to where you are now. And we wanted to like even think about having the flu like someone who has a flu. They don't just go Oh, well. I'm just going to pretend like everything is normal. And I'm going to push through this feeling like crap. We don't do that. We take time off, we stay in bed. We hopefully drink lots of water drink broth, people help us out. This is cancer. And you have to realize it's a serious illness that requires serious attention. Okay, so we've got, stop, stop, whatever you're doing. Go away for the weekend or a week. close your doors, turn off your phone, stop and sit with yourself. Get out of pencil and paper. What do you need as yourself that question, what do you need? What kind of support would help you right now? What kind of information and What do you not need? What do you not want to hear about? What are you not ready for, and who can help you manage that piece. If you're not ready for it, do not be ashamed of that. Do not feel like you have to put on your big girl pink panties and ribbons, and do everything, you get to do nothing, if that's what you feel you need. And you just have to make sure you've got someone who can take care of the things for you, who can take care of the insurance calls, who can take care of making the appointments, whatever you need. And you'd feel like you don't have the energy to do, it's okay. And get help reach out, get support, let people help you. And I think this is a really important thing. A lot of times, people with a new diagnosis have this thought I don't want to be a burden, I don't want to put people out, I don't want to inconvenience people, you got to let that go. You got to work through those thoughts. Because those people love you, those people who are your champions, they love you. And they're very concerned for your wellness. And there's nothing they can do other than support you and they don't know how to support you if you don't tell them how to support you. So it's super important that you say, You know what, I could use a dinner drop off. But here are the foods that I want to eat to make sure they're supporting my healing, right? You get to set those boundaries, you get to call someone or say, I don't know, I can't deal with the stress of the appointments and the insurance and the forms and the approvals. Can someone help me with that? Don't be ashamed. Don't feel like it's not okay for you to do that. Because it is okay. All right. So in that space, all the things need consideration. What information do you need? How do you filter out what you don't feel like you are ready to take on handle or process? Who do you want to share this information with? And it's okay, whatever you do whatever you feel ready for is perfectly okay. Right? Whether you want to shout it from the rooftops, or whether there's one person in your life, you want to know? It's okay. Right? So what do you need? How do you take care of yourself? What questions do you have? What resources are available to you? And reassuring yourself that you get to take the time and space that you deserve? To get your questions answered, you get to interview doctors, you get to go to the oncologists that your insurance sends you to you get to ask your questions. And if you don't feel well taken care of, if you don't feel heard, if you don't feel like there's a connection, or this is a person you want on your team, you get to ask for a different doctor. That's okay. If you have HMO sometimes you can like I had to change medical groups to get the doctor that I wanted. So I had to wait a couple of weeks for the first of the month to roll around. So I could change the Medical Group in my insurance so I could go see the doctor I wanted to see.
33:18
It's okay if you need to do that. What's most important is you feel confident with your care team. You feel heard by your care team, and you get your in your questions answered appropriately. Okay. So taking that space, calming yourself down, working through those thoughts, getting support, getting your questions answered, and knowing that you don't have to choose this or that, right. A lot of people will come to you and say, let's do a hair test. And let's do this test and do high dose vitamin C therapy and, and all this is available to you if and when you're ready for it. But you do not have to pick one or the other. A lot of times people feel guilty they go to the standard of care. And most standard of care doctors are not open to integrative care, thank God more and more becoming more integrative physicians and you're super fortunate if you find someone that is and that can even be one of the things you decide like, I'm going to find a doctor that's open to integrative care, because I want all the things that could potentially benefit me. Super great. I'll put a link to this right here in this episode, where you can go to metabolically trained physicians and look at the whole directory of them and and pick a doctor there but you can decide is this important to me that a doctor is both an oncologist and an integrative practitioner or what's called functional medicine. Do they have a background in functional medicine? Do does the hospital you're going to get treated at have a nutritionist on hand. Have someone who's practicing an integrative approach because many of them do. So investigate the resources available for your support at your own hospital. Lots of them will have social workers that can help guide you to different programs. And they have different people, they, I mean, the hospital that I volunteer with, they have a whole integrative center. So they've got lymphatic massage therapists, they've got personal trainers, right? They've got exercise therapists, they've got pulmonary therapists, they've got yoga classes, they got meditation classes, they've got art classes for stress relief. So lots of things that are available to you in treatment. Again, I'm giving you a lot of information. And you may hear that go, that's overwhelming, I am still in shock. And that's okay, you can come back and listen to this again and again. And I put together a free download for you that you can download and put your notes and questions in and go back to the steps that I'm sharing with you. And you can find that at the breast cancer recovery coach forward slash 344, or a link to it right here where you're watching or listening to this podcast, okay, so you can have that at your disposal. So the only reason I'm sharing so much is because I want to emphasize to you that there are lots of tools to support you. Right, so a new diagnosis, or diagnosis of recurrence, it's scary. But there's hold space for yourself, take time for yourself. And when you're ready to make the decisions as to what your care is going to look like. Know this also, you can change your mind. Sometimes it's hard to even wrap our mind around for instance, let's say that for me, I'll share my story. So let's say my doctor recommended six months of chemotherapy. And it was terrifying. And I didn't know at the time to even think this way. But I work with lots of clients on it now is to say, Do you want to do it and they want to do it not because yeah, I want to do chemotherapy, they believe it's the right thing for them to do for whatever the reason is, and that's okay. But wrapping their head around doing it for six months was so much that it's really hard to process. So whether it's radiation, or chemotherapy, know that commit to the first treatment, if that's your decision, right, if you make the decision, you're going to do it. Sometimes it settles easier, you say I'm going to do it one time, and then I'm going to decide if I'm going to do it the second time. Now, most of the cases I see they do decide to continue to do it. But sometimes it's just easier to get into our mind and process. If we know I have the power to do this one step at a time. So that's what I really want to drive home is you have the power to decide what choices you'll make, what treatments you'll do, how much you'll do those treatments, how often you'll do those treatments. Yes, your oncologist, your surgeons, everyone, they're going to make recommendations to you. But know that you have the power to even think about them differently. Right that maybe you're like, Yeah, I am all in. But it's too much to think about being all in. So you can even think about it in a way that makes it easier for you. And so I've made this decision. I'm doing that this week. And I'll worry about next week when next week comes, okay. I want you to think about how to be gentle on yourself, how to care about yourself, how to hold space for yourself, and how to take up space for yourself. Don't play small. This is not the time to play small. This is the time to start peeling back all those layers that say, Be a good girl, don't speak up. Don't burden anybody and all of that BS. That leaves us feeling outside of a community and alone. This is a time to get very confident in knowing that you are worth wherever you feel you need. Right now, that goes for anyone who's got a new diagnosis and is going into treatment or making treatment decisions. And that goes with anyone who's living their life.
39:05
This is something that I mean, I don't coach about cancer, right? I'm not an oncologist. I don't treat cancer, I don't coach on cancer. Even when I'm working with my clients on the metabolic approach to supporting their health and their ability to heal. I'm not dealing with cancer, I'm dealing with their overall wellness with their body with the tissues and the terrain of their body and their mind. So your oncologist and neurosurgeon deal with cancer and you will make those decisions. But you have a whole world available to you that allows you to manage and deal with what keeps you healthy and what supports your healing. And that goes for everyone across the board, from someone who's diagnosed to someone who's just living their life. Take up the space that you need to get what you are worthy of and deserving of and ask for what you need. This is so important, okay. So I think that that's really the message I would drive home. So for a newly diagnosed person, download the guide world, spell it out a little more clearly, but really holding space for yourself. And asking those important questions and establishing the boundaries of what you need and how you need this treatment to look for you. So that it doesn't stress you out, leave you sick with worry, and that you're not bombarded with negativity and loving control. Meaning that a lot of people will want to make treatment decisions for you, you should do this, you should do that you shouldn't do this, you shouldn't do that. They do it because they love you. They do it because they're worried they do it because they're scared. And so initially setting up the boundaries for what you've decided to do. And even sometimes crafting responses for things like that, where I had a lot of people offer me different things that they said, this chiropractor does this, this person does that this holistic person has that and I would just say, Thank you, I will definitely put that down on the list, but I just don't have the capacity to fit that in right now. Right. So just thinking about what your boundaries are, I think is an Uber important thing to do when you were first diagnosed. Now I would be remiss if I did not say to you get the metabolic approach to cancer the book, read the book, learn about the tools that are open to you to support your body, read the book radical remission, because it gives you hope, and a new perspective on healing. And your job as the person who was diagnosed, is to focus on supporting your body's ability to heal. While you're letting your oncologist deal with the cancer. All right, two very different things. So understand the tools that are available to you to support a healthy metabolism and make lifestyle changes. And between starting with those three books, right, the Breast Cancer Survival Guide. So the questions for you to ask so that you know the right information, the metabolic approach to cancer so that you understand the plethora of tools and lifestyle options that are available to you. And radical revisions that you fill yourself with hope and encouragement and peace. I think that's super important. And that you remember, your job is to support your healing. Your job is to love yourself more. Your job is to take up the space, you need to take good care of yourself. That is the most important thing. All right, I hope that's helpful. And obviously, if you need support, this is what I do. Right? So you can find me at the breast cancer recovery coach.com I do private sessions, I offer my better than before breast cancer membership, which is group coaching, private sessions, monthly lessons, a library of resources and information and programs that can support you as you're ready for them or in whatever area you're ready for. And I am a certified terrain advocate. And so that means that I use that metabolic approach to cancer in my metabolic health coaching programs, with your labs with your genetic reports with your life story with your dream 10. And we craft a program that is specific to your body and your body's needs to support your ability to heal. I wish I had known that that was available to me the first time I was diagnosed because if I did, I don't think I ever would have had a recurrence. I think that's how important it is. Obviously from the healing I've experienced it's very powerful stuff. All right friends, take good care of yourself. And that's it again soon.
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