8 Steps for a Woman Dancing with Cancer

 

In this short post, Susun Weed looks at 8 steps a woman can take after a diagnosis of cancer.

1. Submit.
Give up. Make room for the miracle.

2. Inform yourself.
Listen to your intuition. Examine all the options, but only use what feels right to you.

3. Accept support.
Surround yourself with loving friends, healing music, special colors, prayer and affirmation. Create a ceremony of healing/wholing and invite your supporters.

4. Anoint your breast(s) with healing herbal oils such as calendula, dandelion, or poke. Visualize healing energies suffusing your tissues.

5. Maximize the healthy qualities of your diet:

• Use organic olive oil and butter to the exclusion of other fats.
• Increase your use of beans, especially lentils, and fermented foods such as yogurt, sauerkraut, miso, tamari, homemade wines and beers.
• Include immune building and anticancer herbs in your diet:

• Daily use of a nourishing infusion, especially red clover flower or burdock root or violet leaf infusions. • Daily use of fresh herb vinegars, especially yellow dock, burdock, and dandelion root vinegars. • Frequent use of a long-cooked soup containing seaweed (such as kombu or wakame), astragalus root, and medicinal mushrooms (reishi, shiitake, puffballs, etc).

6. Increase you exercise level.
Take a yoga or tai chi class weekly. Walk daily. Get a weekly massage. Pamper yourself with activity.

7. Use drugs (chemotherapy, tamoxifen, anesthesia, pain killers) as required but:

• consider a short trial of a powerful herb such as poke root before resorting to drugs; and
• always combine drug use with complementary herbs. For instance, protect the liver with milk thistle seed tincture.

8. Use radiation and surgery as needed but:

• always combine with complementary herbs; and
• be willing to set limits that you feel comfortable with - they can't take your lymph glands if you say "No."

For more information, see Breast Cancer? Breast Health! The Wise Woman Way by Susun Weed. www.ashtreepublishing.com

Susun Weed PO Box 64 Woodstock, NY 12498 Fax: 1-845-246-8081




Photo by NASA Goddard

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Abnormal Mammogram - What Now?

It’s 10am on a Tuesday morning. You are getting ready for a meeting with your team when a phone call comes in for you…from your health care provider. It seems your routine annual mammogram has found a small spot that needs further evaluation. Now what?

No doubt about it, an abnormal mammogram is a scary thing. The first thing you should remember is that 80 percent of these lumps turn out to be benign, meaning they are not cancerous. However, it’s prudent for your health care provider to arrange for you to have a biopsy done to insure that your spot does indeed fall into that 80%.

What’s a biopsy? A biopsy is a procedure that allows for tissue to be removed and tested for cancer. In many cases, the produced for taking tissue results in little to no pain and there is minimal to no scarring involved.

There are for main types of breast biopsies that are done.

Fine Needle Aspiration Biopsy (FNAB) – This is the least invasive form of biopsy. The FNAB uses a tiny needle that is inserted directly into the lump. The content of the lump is then pulled back into the needle and syringe and the whole thing is withdrawn. In many cases, done properly, these procedures are painless, leave no scarring, and can be done in your providers office. Best of all, results can be ready in a few days.

Core Needle Biopsy (CNB) - The needle involved is a bit larger, with a bit of discomfort. The needle is again guided into the lump and the sample is obtained just like the FNAB. Again, the results are available in just a few days – often in 48 hours.

Image-Guided Breast Biopsy - In this type of biopsy, instead of guiding the needle by “feel” (feeling the lump to guide the needle), the needle is guided into the lump using ultrasound. This is often called a Stereotatic needle biopsy. In this case, the procedure is often performed by a radiologist or surgeon where equipment is available.

Surgical Biopsy – While often not used just to diagnosis breast cancer alone, they are performed when the decision is made by you and your surgeon to remove either part (incisional biopsy) or the entire (excisional biopsy) lump. This can be performed on an out-patient basis.

Undergoing any type of procedure on our breasts can be scary, especially when we are faced with possibly receive a diagnosis of breast cancer. However, having an understanding of what is going on, what to expect, and why something is being done can alleviate some of that fear and help you become an active partner in your quest for further information.

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