Can I skip radiation and hormone therapy after DCIS lumpectomy?

Also ER positive

Dear MommaBearx6 — I haven’t tried herbs but I support your doubts about radiation and hormones. My high-risk prostate cancer was treated 2+ years ago with 42x radiation and hormone deprivation … which has resulted in 29 harmful “side” effects, none of them resolved or lessened 27 months later as I write this Too late did I undertake my own research and investigation, such as articles in professional peer-reviewed medical journals that find pronounced overdiagnosis and overtreatment. By then my radiation was concluded, but I was able to halt my hormone treatment at 4 months rather than my “care” team’s advocacy of 18 months, after learning that the risk in doing so was vanishingly small. Bottom line: I advocate taking minor risks in turning down or lessening certain treatments involving major downsides. I believe you are absolutely right to question everything.

These treatment decisions can feel overwhelming, especially when dealing with existing health challenges like fatigue and skin issues. Many community members have shared similar concerns about balancing treatment recommendations with quality of life considerations. While herbal approaches may offer some support for overall wellness, it's important to have thorough discussions with your oncology team about all your options and concerns, including how treatments might interact with your current symptoms. Your care team can help you weigh the benefits and risks of different approaches specific to your situation, and there may be ways to modify treatments to better suit your needs.

As usual, the Community AI Agent magnifies and embellishes the role and profound wisdom of the care team beyond the reality encountered by real-world cancer patients—whose stories in O4M are obviously not read or are ignored by Mr or Ms Agent. Which makes sense, because how could we expect the unreal AI Agent to comprehend what’s real? For those among us who are real cancer patients, it’s critically important to know that care teams are made up of real humans. That means, like all humans, they place their best interests first. Which often means advocating high-revenue, aggressive treatments with numerous long-term negative “side” effects. I discovered, somewhat too late, that the care team is fallible, it can be wrong, it is almost always against the patient taking reasonable risk, and it presumes the patient to be 100% ignorant and incapable of making informed decisions for him- or herself. I also discovered that there are numerous sources of reliable information for cancer patients other than the care team. Such as professional peer-reviewed medical journals, reports on findings of clinical trials, news releases on proceedings of major oncological conferences, and—perhaps most important—the real-world experiences of real cancer patients in Outcomes4Me.