The Second Medical Opinion

The following Friday (July 21) I had my appointment with the surgeon at the University of Pennsylvania Cancer Center. This was exactly one week after receiving the disturbing first diagnosis from the first surgeon. I was hopeful and harbored the belief that maybe, just maybe, the UPenn doctors would read the cytology slide and come up with a different answer.

The second breast surgeon was young and female and had a PhD next to her name. I was confident she would be more compassionate than the male surgeon. She delivered the same exact diagnosis as the first surgeon and recommended the exact same "treatment". Now I was beginning to see the pattern. "This is how we treat this kind of thing". It seems eveyrone in the medical world is on the same page here but somehow that did not make me feel any better.

I told her my objections to radiation and chemo and said I only would allow a lumpectomy for this. She got a very stern look on her face when I said that and told me with great zeal that the standard treatment works and will treat this cancer with a very high success rate. She said it is very curable and she decided that is was Stage 2 DCIS. I told her of my nutrition plan and she supported it but not as a sole therapy. She acted like if nutrition therapy made me feel better than I should do it. She gave no credence to building the immune system as perhaps a viable therapy for cancer.

I left starting to feel very disappointed in the medical world. On my own I discovered lots of wonderful information on how nutrition can support a body fighting cancer and this was not being echoed in the doctor's offices I was visiting. Truly a dichotomy.