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Valerie Gold posted an update in the group ER+ PR+ HER2- Breast Cancer Advocate Network
THE VALERIE GOLD STORY Her Battle with er+ pr+ her2 Breast Cancer Written by Val Gold with Eric Drew
My name is Val Gold and I am a 54 yearold healthy woman, and I have been successfully battling breast cancer for 14 years (as I write this now). I was first diagnosed with “er+ pr+ her2 Infiltrating Ductal Carcinoma” in January of 2002 at Kaiser hospital in Santa Teresa San Jose CA. Needless to say I was terrified! I could hardly pronounce this diagnosis, and definitely did not know anything about it. I sure wasn’t qualified to start making life and death decisions about what treatments to do. It was clear, however, that the opinions I was getting from the doctors were conflicting with my own intuition as to how to treat this disease.
I was told I needed to have massive surgery within one week (they recommended a mastectomy), or have a lumpectomy to remove most of the tumor then six weeks of intense radiation. They said maybe if I did the full mastectomy right away, I may not need the radiation part, However, if the tumor came back I would need the a mastectomy anyway. Either way they said I would need six months of heavy chemo afterwards just to be sure,
It felt like they were pressuring these horrible treatments on me, and it didn’t feel right at all! I looked into the side effects of these procedures, and all of them were going to be very traumatic! In the case of radiation and chemo, these were going to make me very sick! I was a healthy athletic person and it didn’t make sense to make my whole body sick to fight a tumor in my breast.
After many severe warnings from the doctors and after all the tests and needle biopsies, I agreed to have a limited initial surgery to extract as much of the tumor as possible, and agreed to have the lumpectomy. However, after the first surgery they said they could not get “a clear margin on the tumor” and needed to go back in, and this time they wanted to take out 20 lymph nodes in a “full lymph node dissection”, but I couldn’t imagine traumatizing my body that much without even knowing if these lymph nodes were cancerous, so I only agreed to let them take the first lymph node in line next to the tumor which they referred to as the “Sentinel Node”. This lymph node was cancerous, so they again pushed me to do a “full lymph node dissection”, and again this was counterintuitive. Why take out all these lymph nodes if they are not cancerous. We agreed on a compromise and 8 more lymph nodes were taken out, but all of these were unaffected and no cancer had spread to these.
It was now only three weeks after my diagnosis and I had already had three surgeries and the damaging side effects were already rearing. I developed a massive infection in my armpit which had to be packed with gauze daily for 30 days, and every one of those day they were pressuring me again and again to start radiation and chemo immediately, both of which I felt very
uncomfortable about. I just wasn’t seeing the benefits overcoming the risks and I didn’t feel right about making my whole body sick when my only problem was in my breast.
To try and find a different opinion I visited Oncologists in Los Gatos, Ca, Stanford Hospital and U.S.C. in LA. Dr James Wiseman who was then Suzanne Somers Oncologist and head of Oncology at U.S.C. had the very bold and condescending opinion that if I did not do the Chemotherapy I would would be dead in four years. These second opinions cost a fortune as they were all outside of Kaiser and all a waste of time and money.
I read about the side effects of all these treatments and began to network with other women who told me about their experiences with these treatments and how sick it made them! Lost eyesight, heart problems, nausea and vomiting, finger and toenails went black and fell out, and many ended up a few years later with other cancers like leukemia and had died. I was also told I needed to take Tamoxifen, which can cause early menopause, cervical cancer, blood clots, stroke, hair loss, and cataracts. Forget that! No way! They began giving women Tamoxifen in the 1960’s, and they still had not come up with anything better? I could not get beyond the side effects and chose not to take it
After being bullied by numerous doctors, I did finally agree to have 6 weeks of radiation which I now regret, as I feel it did more damage than good. The only place I have the tumors now is where I did the radiation, and I am convinced it is because of the radiation. I also have necrotic (dead) tissue in this area which has caused edema and other issues. In parallel with these treatments, however, I began my search for more natural and less invasive treatments.
I followed the writings and story of Suzanne Sommers who had done so much research on more natural ways to fight breast cancer, and the first thing I realized I needed to change was my diet. I followed a microbiotic diet, making sure I ate only organic products. I had previously thought I had a healthy diet, but I realize now I ate too much red meat and dairy. These were quick to go along with wheat flour and sugar, which cancer loves and feeds on.
I purchased a Juniper Water Ionizer along with a very complex water filtration system for the kitchen, as I had researched that cancer loves and acidic environment and hates an alkaline one. Changing the alkalinity in my body by drinking alkaline water would make it harder for the cancer to survive.
I did injectable mistletoe, vitamin C infusions, and another natural supplement which was injected into the lymph nodes called 714X. For several years I was stable with no sign of disease, until a tumor appeared under my arm in 2006 (where I had the radiation) and I had it removed with a small surgery. In 2007 I went to Germany and did one of the first Immunotherapies ever offered, and it seemed to work very well. The Dr. who ran the clinic was Dr. Kubler at the LaborPraxisklinik in Munich. ( http://www.laborpraxisklinik.de ) Since then I have been diligent with an anticancer diet and I have taken many anticancer supplements. I have been doing very well for many years but the cancer is back, and I am now
raising money to do another immune therapy in Santa Barbara that I feel very positive about! Please support me in getting this treatment on GoFundMe page called “Valerie Gold Stage 4 Cancer”.
If I could go back in time 14 years to my diagnosis, and give myself advice, I would say “Slow down! You are not going to die tomorrow so don’t rush into invasive and potentially damaging treatments and surgeries. “Cut that, chop things off, radiate everything, and poison your body with carcinogenic cancer causing substances”. This just doesn’t make sense, even now! I want to attack the cancer cells in my body, and help my body fight this cancer, not kill all the healthy normal cells!
I have known tens of other women who followed the medical advice to a tee and did everything that was recommended, and many of them have died. Many others who did survive have severe permanent disabling problems.
Even though I have refused much of the recommended treatments and have never done chemo, I seem to be doing much better than most of the women who went the traditional route. I have lived a good quality of life these past 14 years, and am very optimistic that I will one day be cured without permanently damaging my body to do so.
Please keep in touch with me and share the things you have learned in the WeHeal Community for er+ pr+her2 breast cancer. I know that by helping each other and sharing our experiences, we will get through this together! https://weheal.org/groups/erprher2breastcancer/
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Erin Jayne posted an update in the group ER+ PR+ HER2- Breast Cancer Advocate Network
If you click on the link it will bring up the picture from the pet scan. It’s all the black dots everywhere. The larger circles is my Brian, heart, pelvic area.
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Thank you for the summary and PET Scans Erin. Let me know if you filled out the ASK form with Cancer Commons and had them copy eric@weheal.org
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Erin Jayne posted an update in the group ER+ PR+ HER2- Breast Cancer Advocate Network
I have been diagnosed on 10.8.19 with stage 4 metastatic breast cancer, which has also spread throughout my entire body. I go to standford for all doctors appointments. I found these lumps myself on 9.18.19 on my neck and I contacted STANFORD myself, went through biopsy they tested 10 lymph nodes. They gave me this news below on Tuesday.
My oncologist told me on Tuesday 10/8/19 that this cancer has spread throughout my whole body, and that I need to start treatment immediately, also that all they are able to do is prolong my life with chemotherapy treatments and other drugs and for the rest of my life every 3 weeks I will do my chemo treatments and I will live as long as they can continue to do treatments. I asked my oncologist “so your saying that unless I do these treatments for the rest of my life every 3weeks, I will die? And that there is no cure for this”Completely in tears sitting there alone with just the oncologist. I also asked how long have you seen someone in my situation live for? She said some make it 2 months so make it 2 years. After I left I just kept thinking to myself NO WAY I just turned 40 years old on 9/30/79.
I have 2 children a son that is 18 and a daughter that will be 8 this month. This is not how I’m going to live my life. There has to be another way or something else out there that will help me.have been in remission since 10.12.2016, i found a lump in my right breast in January 2016 and after testing and all i found out on April 12,2016 that i had stage 3 breast cancer the lumps in my right breast were the size of 3 golf balls and it had spread into my lymph nodes. It was HER2 positive, estrogen positive. And something else, i will provide all the information which i have in a box at home.
I am blessed to have been referred to Eric Drew and i am looking for help with any other treatments or options available. I am a VERY STRONG WOMAN AND I NEVER LOSE A FIGHT. I will fight till the end. I was going to start my own research on what else is out there before I was introduced to Eric Drew.
I’m here to learn and help with any questions anyone has and i want to learn what other options are out there for this news I received. I’m going to share a picture of my pet scan results showing where all the cancer has spread throughout my body, My oncologist has not been able to tell me how long these have been in body and I SERIOUSLY DO NOT BELIEVE that all of them just showed up randomly, they also said that there is nothing i could of done to prevent this from happening (which i really don’t understand) and that there is nothing i could have do to cause this. I think its bullshit and i want more answers. Before i undergo and treatments. I know there is other treatments out there.
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Erin your story absolutely brings me to tears, as I have been there myself and know how difficult it is to bear such news, and I can say that everything I was told and probably everything you were told was not true. This is THEIR opinion, not YOUR reality! You can choose your own reality and your own destiny just as I did, and I am here to help you in any way I can!.. Please email me and I will walk you through what resources we can arrange to help you evaluate your “curative” options. eric@ericdrew.com
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Erin Jayne joined the group ER+ PR+ HER2- Breast Cancer Advocate Network
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LoveWorks joined the group ER+ PR+ HER2- Breast Cancer Advocate Network
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Gracie007 posted an update in the group ER+ PR+ HER2- Breast Cancer Advocate Network
I had dense breast tissue like many of my survivor friends.
MIT's AI can identify breast cancer risk as reliably as a radiologistResearchers have developed an automated model that assesses dense breast tissue in mammograms as reliably as expert radiologists. -
Gracie007 posted an update in the group ER+ PR+ HER2- Breast Cancer Advocate Network
It is about time they stop over treating
Good News for Women With Breast Cancer: Many Don’t Need Chemo – The New York TimesMany women with early-stage forms of the disease can forego chemo, based on a test that measures the activity of genes involved in breast cancer recurrence. -
Cherokee joined the group ER+ PR+ HER2- Breast Cancer Advocate Network