Breast Cancer Treatment and Fertility

Most women are ill-informed about the questions they must be asking their doctor before the treatment starts. Young women who are yet to have children and mothers who are planning for more children are advised to talk to their physician about how cancer treatment can put their fertility at risk.

Chemotherapy may affect your ability to have children. Many well-informed young women decide to freeze their eggs before the chemo starts, but not all women have sufficient knowledge about how the treatment can affect their fertility or about the options that are available to preserve their fertility.

Fertility issues during breast cancer

Most physicians will advise you that breast cancer treatment must take priority over fertility. Fortunately, breast cancer does not mean that your dreams of becoming a parent are doomed forever. Even with cancer treatment as your first priority, you can still maximize your chances of becoming a parent.

It is important that the physician and the patient work together on this. If the patient is in a relationship, the partner's concerns must be factored in as well. Some of the questions that you need to answer include:
How important is it to have a baby, for you and your partner?Do you have an optimistic prognosis that allows you to plan for your future as a parent?Will it be safe for you to be pregnant?If there is a recurrence or the survival is limited, will the child have enough caretakers in your absence?Are you comfortable with adoption or consider using donor eggs to become a parent?

These are definitely tough questions for anyone to answer, even more so for someone who is already bogged down by the severe emotional toll that cancer can unleash. Nonetheless, it is important that you answer these questions as you prepare for the cancer treatment.

Chemotherapy and fertility

Will chemotherapy make you infertile? The answer to this depends on the woman's age and the type of chemotherapy drugs that are used. The younger you are, the better your chances that the ovaries will continue producing fertile eggs even after treatment. Certain chemotherapy drugs, especially those belonging to the group of alkylating agents, can cause relatively more damage to the ovaries than others. Talk to your physician about the type of drugs that will be used for your cancer treatment.

Preserving fertility

If you have been given a relatively good prognosis by your doctor, you may want to ask a fertility expert about the possible options to preserve your fertility.

Here are some questions you may want to ask your fertility expert:
Should you freeze your eggs now? What does the procedure involve?Should you also consider freezing some of your ovarian tissue?Are there fertility treatments that will be less risky for you?What are the financial, medical, emotional and time-wise costs that each of these options involve?

If your doctor says it is okay to postpone your chemo, you may want to undergo ovarian stimulation during this time to harvest enough eggs. Also consider how safe fertility drugs are. Some hormones in the drugs may encourage breast cancer cell activity and cause it to spread rapidly.

With some soul-searching and discussion with your oncologist and fertility expert, you can come up with a definite plan to become a parent in future.

Through his articles, youngrin wishes to inform and educate the readers about breast cancer treatments which will benefit those who are looking for useful information. For breast cancer doctors visit breast cancer treatment centers of america.

Original article

Chemotherapy For Breast Cancer - What You Need To Know Before Undergoing The Treatment

Chemotherapy is generally prescribed as a treatment for patients with early stage breast cancer. It is also the treatment of choice for patients with high-risk metastatic breast cancer. The drugs used in the treatment kill rapidly dividing tumor cells that may be spreading through the body. This helps reduce the risk of the cancer coming back in another part of the body.

Chemotherapy can also be used as the main treatment for cancer that has spread outside the breast and underarm area. It can also be used to shrink a large tumor prior to surgery. The treatment can be administered in-patient, outpatient, at home or a combination of these. Chemotherapy for breast cancer and tamoxifen have been shown to independently reduce the risk of developing a second cancer in the other breast. The risk reduction may persist for at least five to ten years.

Chemotherapy also works best in younger women. This treatment is usually administered between two to six weeks following surgery and continues for total of three to six months. The same treatment is usually given after surgery because it can reduce the chance of the cancer returning. This is known as adjuvant chemotherapy for breast cancer and may boost cure rates by as much as fifteen percent.

One may therefore conclude that chemotherapy is the initial choice for the treatment of breast cancer. However, there are several factors to be considered before deciding to undergo the treatment.

Before the doctor decides to recommend chemotherapy to his or her breast cancer patient, the doctor would generally take into consideration the age of the patient, as well as her life stage. While chemotherapy, radiotherapy, or surgery may slow the progression of recurrent breast cancer, chemotherapy and radiation can permanently damage ovaries.

Early menopause may set in when the ovaries stop producing estrogen. If a patient is relatively young and plans to start a family eventually, she could first have her eggs harvested for future use before undergoing chemotherapy.

Chemotherapy should not be given during the first three months of pregnancy as it may cause fetal malformations. The treatment has been more widely used in the second and third trimesters, as organogenesis is complete. However, it may still cause early labor and low birth weight.

Other research has shown that chemotherapy may affect a developing fetus in the second or third trimester. If the breast cancer must be treated with chemotherapy and radiation therapy and if your oncologist deems the treatment may harm the fetus, you may face the painful decision of having to end your pregnancy. This decision will likely depend on the stage of cancer, the age of the fetus and the mother's chance of survival. Be sure to discuss with your oncologist to make sure you fully understand the risks before commencing your treatment.

While the chemotherapy kills the cancer cells, it will leave the patient weak. Your medical oncologist and nurse will discuss possible side effects with you before treatment begins.

To cope with the side effects, be sure to get adequate rest between treatments. Eat non greasy, nutritious food and drink fresh fruit and vegetable juices to ensure that your body is well nourished. Take multivitamins if necessary. Vitamins and minerals to take with chemotherapy for breast cancer would include Vitamin C and D, as well as calcium, magnesium and zinc, among others.

Taking multivitamins with minerals after diagnosis was found to be associated with a 20% lower risk of recurrence and 29% lower risk of breast cancer-specific death compared to never using multivitamins.You may also eat organic yogurt as a way of helping your digestive tract to recover and repopulate your gut with friendly bacteria to boost your immune system.

Click on types of breast cancer treatments for the latest information on the types of breast cancer treatments available. Celine Yong has done extensive research on women's health and beauty. Visit her blog at http://healthtipsforwomen.net/ for more valuable tips on breast cancer treatment.

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Conventional Treatment For Someone With Breast Cancer

There are a number of treatment options once diagnosed with breast cancer that you can choose from. Late detection of the cancer minimizes the chances of having it cured. Because men have smaller breasts, the cancer is likely to spread at a faster rate during the initial stages compared to women. However, if for both men and women the stage of the cancer during diagnosis is the same, the chances of survival are equal for both.

Treatment will depend on factors such as the stage, its sensitivity to hormones and the type of cancer. Some treatment options include;

Surgery. There are different types of surgery. They include; breast reconstruction, mastectomy to remove the breast or part of it, prophylactic surgery, lymph node dissection, or breast conserving surgery to remove the lump. Men with breast cancer can undergo a surgery referred to as a modified radical mastectomy to remove the breast, chest muscle lining and some of the lymph nodes under the arm.

Chemotherapy. This is the use of medication of a combination of medicines to exterminate and weaken cancer cells throughout the body so that they do not continue to grow. It helps to keep the cancer from striking again. The doctor might use this therapy to minimize the cancer before surgery is performed and during the final stages of the cancer to kill as many cancer cells as possible.

Hormonal therapy. Not only does it reduce the chances of the cancer reoccurring but also the growing and spreading of cancer cells. Like chemotherapy it also stops the cancer cells from growing. Hormone therapy is one of the standard treatments for breast cancer in men especially if the cancer was caused by hormones.

Radiation therapy. Radiation therapy will depend on the type and the stage of the cancer. It can be internal where radioactive substances are positioned near the cancer to kill or prevent the cancer cells from growing or external radiation where the body is exposed to radiation outside the body to achieve the same results. This therapy can be performed after surgery to kill the remaining cancer cells.

Mastectomy, removal of the lymph node, radiation and lumpectomy are used in the treatment of stage I and II breast cancer. After surgery, chemotherapy, hormone therapy and biologic therapy are used. Stage IV cancer is not easily curable therefore treatment will be directed towards the symptoms and lengthening ones life.

Emma Wanjiku is an experienced writer and publisher who focusses/reports on issues affecting you. Her research is based on aspects and topics of life that matter. She is a trained journalist. For daily health tips and fitness information, access her health site at http://www.emmalifetips.com/

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The Pros and Cons of Alternative Cancer Treatment

I am writing this to anyone out there who has like me, joined the cancer club. I currently have breast cancer. I am not however, doing conventional treatment. I'm not having chemo, radiation, nor have I had a mastectomy. I am using an alternative cancer treatment called Protocel.

I first found out about Protocel from my gynecologist. Shortly after my diagnosis, his office kept calling me asking, "Can you come in today? Can you come in tomorrow? Can you come in on Friday? When can you come in?" I thought, "Why does my gynecologist want to see me so bad?" I was quite busy setting up appointments with an oncologist and for my chemo treatment, so I didn't get back to him right away. Finally, I went in to see him. He told me to research Protocel on the internet and to consider alternative treatment for my cancer. I was so impressed by what I read online that I decided to forego conventional treatment and use Protocel instead.

Many times when I tell people what I'm doing. I tell them, "There really are non-toxic alternative cancer treatments that really do work! Really!" The internet is full testimonies of people who were sent home to die, or supposedly had incurable cancers like pancreatic cancer who used Protocel, or some other alternative treatment and were cured. Yes, I use the word CURED!

Lately, whenever I see some famous person who has cancer I want to contact them and tell them to look into alternative cancer treatments. Recently, I saw that Steve Jobs has pancreatic cancer. I actually Googled him to see if there was a way that I could email him, but I couldn't find anything. Maybe by an intervention from God he will read this article.

Anyway, I wanted to write about the success that I'm having so far. In May 2011, I had a PET scan. It showed that my numbers had gone down from the previous PET scan that I had in October 2010. The radiologist also said that my numbers are so low that he really is not too concerned about me. He also said, "Keep doing what you're doing." Last December 2010, I had an MRI. It showed that my lymph nodes had cleared up and were now cancer free. This is HUGE because cancer spreads through the lymph nodes. If all this, "alternative cancer treatment business," were nothing but hogwash, I would not be showing improvement with these very conventional tests.

The downside of doing alternative cancer treatment is that you're kind of out there on your own. Most doctor's are not familiar with alternative cancer treatment, and will only recommend conventional treatment. You need to become your own expert. Doing alternative cancer treatment means going against your doctor's advice, and that can be a scary thing. You have to gather up your courage, and be assertive and firm in your resolve. It is also important to remain respectful of your doctor, and keep a good relationship with them. I have found that most doctor's are very caring individual's, who truly have their patients best interest at heart. They just want you to survive!

If you or someone you love has been given a grave cancer diagnosis, at least look up alternative cancer treatment on the internet. BE INFORMED! There are so many different types out there that it might be hard to decide which one you want to use, but if you do decide to use a powerful alternative cancer treatment, you just might surprise everyone and live

That day in my gynecologist's office he recommended a book to me called, "Outsmart Your Cancer." That book is full of information about many alternative cancer treatments besides just Protocel. That book has become my cancer Bible. I refer to it again and again. If you would like to order the, "Outsmart Your Cancer," book, Cick here; http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/click?id=zwRI8v/cR0k&subid=&offerid=229293.1&type=10&tmpid=8433&RD_PARM1=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.barnesandnoble.com%252Fs%252Foutsmart-your-cancer.

For more information about Protocel as well as other alternative cancer treatments that really do work, I mean really do CURE CANCER, check out author Laurie Bassart's website http://alternatives4cancer.com/?page_id=27

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