Breast Cancer, Implants, Big Pharma and COVID
PART I: PSA to women out there....do your homework! Informed consent is critical as we all have a different risk/benefit analysis and tolerance.
I was 45 when I was diagnosed with breast cancer.
My cancer story is part of the story as to how I became a “conspiracy theorist.” How I learned the hard way that modern medicine and technology are often more about stripping the humanity out of the practice of medicine in the name of efficiency and economy (i.e. more $$$$ for the higher ups busy selling us on innovation and data).
It was April of 2014 when I first felt the lump in the upper right quadrant of my breast, I knew it was cancer before any tests or imaging. I had had a mammogram only a few months prior in December of 2013, giving me a clean bill of health with the caveat that I have dense breasts.
The thing is, I knew my body. I knew that it was not a cyst or swelling due to my period or some hormonal surge. It was hard, it was close to 2.5 cm and it was like nothing I had ever had or felt before. From the moment I noticed it, I knew in my gut that it was likely cancer. I said as much to my cousin.
What followed was an examination in my doctor’s office resulting in a referral to my local breast care center for further evaluation. Another mammogram and ultrasound had the nurse practitioner there convinced it was a fibroadenoma. I can remember her showing me on a screen how the mass had all the tell-tale signs of a benign fibroadenoma. She was so confident that they scheduled me for a follow up mammogram in 6 months saying that I need not worry, but that we could do a recheck at that time. I asked for a biopsy.
A biopsy was done and within a day or so the news was delivered by phone that the mass was cancerous. The nurse practitioner was so very apologetic when she called. She was in disbelief, and I found myself reassuring and comforting her. After all, she was not telling me anything that my gut had not already told me. I was prepared for the bad news in a way that she was not. Sadly, this phenomenon has gone on to repeat itself in my life on a few occasions. My intuition or gut informs me and then I do my homework, often being chastised, called names or dismissed, only to come out the other side on the side of truth.
After receiving the news of my diagnosis, I was called back to the breast cancer center to meet with a surgeon to discuss my diagnosis and a plan of action. I was escorted into a small room that was set up with a small couch and chairs, low lighting and soothing music. Upon arrival, I was handed a “goody bag” (homemade cloth bag to hold information relevant to my diagnosis), to get me started on my cancer journey. I can remember being totally turned off by the “goody bag.” I felt like I was invited to a party that I did not want to attend, and they were handing out a bag of treats to try to soften the blow. I know it was not their intent to offend, but it felt gross and misguided. During this meeting, the surgeon (who I had had before and for whom I had much respect) proceeded to tell me that he recommended that I have a lumpectomy. He was equipped with all his talking points, referencing the data, the data, the data. The data shows that mastectomies do not improve one’s chance of survival. Mastectomies are over treatment. Yada, Yada, Yada. I don’t hold it against him. He was doing what he has been trained to do.
But here’s the thing, I was and am the mother of two daughters. At the time of my diagnosis, my daughters were 10 and 7. For me, the question was not about preserving my breasts, it was about trying to ensure that I would be around to raise my children.
This is an important point. I will say that again. This is a very important point.
The point is, we all have different levels of risk tolerance. We all have our own personal circumstance and that is before we even get to discussing the fact that each one of us has a unique medical background, genetic history, and personal health profile. ALL of these factors are relevant to one’s RIGHT to make an informed choice on how to proceed relative to treatment of any illness or even prophylactic measures. We are not all the same.
And while modern medicine often makes all these promises about “specialized personalized medicine” they are really selling you is what the data says. My hang up is that data is only as good as the information that goes into compiling it. And when it comes to medical decisions, particularly those that may have life and death consequences, there has to be room for individuals to make their own determination. Data be damned. After all, there may be factors worthy of consideration that were not part of the data that is now being used to convince you relative to a certain course of treatment. Also, there needs to be recognition by those pushing the data-based solutions that there are always going to be outliers…. again, another good reason to stand firm in defense of medical freedoms/rights. Just because I am an outlier does not mean I should die because the bell curve does not give as much weight to my experience, right?
Again, my breast surgeon was advocating heavily for a lumpectomy. Meanwhile, I was busy doing my research relative to my breast cancer risk factors and assessing not only my attachment to my breasts but was weighing my risk tolerance relative to various potential future outcomes. My daughters figured heavily in my risk/benefit analysis, and you can rest assured that the data and stats my breast surgeon was throwing at me did not take them into consideration.
My husband and I were leaning towards a mastectomy. I wanted to take the action that would give me the best shot at seeing my young daughters grow into adulthood. Again, there were admonitions of overtreatment, yada, yada, yada. One must remember that when you get a cancer diagnosis, you spend the first month or so in shell shock. It seems surreal as you go from specialist to specialist and try to find your footing.
When we met with the plastic surgeon, we asked him what he would recommend, lumpectomy or mastectomy. I will be forever grateful to this doctor for his honesty and forthright answer. He replied simply, “If it were my wife, I know what I would do, a mastectomy.” His answer acknowledged the basis for our desire to do a mastectomy despite the breast surgeons lectures relative to over treatment and statistics/data. His answer validated our risk tolerance assessment that factored our daughters/circumstance into our decision not just the data.
My mastectomy was scheduled quickly, both doctors working to get me into surgery fast so that I would be recovered before my children were home underfoot for summer vacation.
I underwent a mastectomy and had implants placed during the same surgery. Looking back, I don’t recall that there was ever any discussion around the option of not having implants. It was kind of assumed that at the age of 45 I would not want to go flat or be disfigured in a noticeable fashion. Sadly, at that time, I was still somewhat naive about the practice of medicine and big pharma. I mostly followed the experts lead, which is why it was such a big deal for me to reject the breast surgeon’s advice that I do a lumpectomy.
In the wake of a breast cancer diagnosis, the conversations with women around breast reconstruction usually center on whether they want to change their size now that they have the option. I was not a candidate for procedures where they reconstruct the breast by using one’s own tissue. I was too thin according to the doctors and specialists.
The implants that were placed in my chest were considered a newer version of silicone implants with the added benefit of a texturized surface that would help them remain in place. More on those puppies later.
After completing his portion of the surgery, the breast surgeon called my husband and told him, “I am so glad that your wife and you did not take my advice regarding the lumpectomy.” He proceeded to report that he had found a second tumor father back on my chest wall that he would not have found had he done a lumpectomy. He candidly admitted that we would have found ourselves back in his office down the line. I genuinely appreciate that this doctor could admit that his advice had been wrong for me and could have essentially been deadly. He was clearly relieved that we had made a different choice. Mind you, all the imagine and testing done prior to surgery, including mammograms, ultrasounds, and MRA, had also failed to alert the surgeon to what he would find once he opened me up. Technology is not as perfect or absolute as they would have us think.
I do wonder, however, how many patients are bullied, coerced, or shamed into taking the advice of an expert, despite their gut or circumstance telling them to make a different choice. There are no guarantees in life, but at the end of the day, I want the right to make my own choice. Exercising rights also means accepting responsibility for those choices.
Not long after my surgery, my plastic surgeon reviewed my pathology report with me. He commented that at 5 pages it was one of the longest pathology reports he had ever seen. The upshot of it was that the supposedly benign fibroadenoma was in truth a grade 3 tumor and the second tumor was grade 2. Not great news. And then to boot, the report stated that other areas of my breasts were diseased with in situ cancer, meaning the abnormal growth was there but had not yet become invasive, including a second kind of cancer. I began to fully understand why the breast surgeon had been so relieved and quick to share with my husband that he was so glad we had not followed his advice. An experienced surgeon can often tell at the time of surgery, well before a pathology report, what they are dealing with by just the appearance of tissue.
My surgery was followed by several weeks of chemotherapy. Again, I was still naive at that time and did not consider any options other than the chemotherapy regimen being offered to me. If I were diagnosed today with cancer, knowing what I now know about big pharma, I would do oodles of research relative to my options, including more natural remedies. I have been inspired by a couple of friends who have had the courage and wherewithal to do such research in their own cases as they face daunting diagnosis and have had good luck with pursuing an integrative approach instead of just relying on big pharma to heal them. Interestingly, the doctors often pushing big pharma remedies can’t even be bothered to ask how it is their cancer patient has successfully achieved certain outcomes without the pills/treatment they were eager to prescribe. But again, medicine has become big business, not so much the healing arts.
I noted in a prior substack that while undergoing my 12 week regimen of Taxol, I went septic. I had had my infusion of Taxol and then my family and I headed off for a weeklong vacation at a friend’s camp. Within 24 hours or so of our arrival, I began to feel very ill. What followed was a trip to an emergency care center where they struggled to keep my blood pressure up. I presented with vomiting, chills, blood pressure dropping out, etc. I was transported by ambulance to a hospital in my hometown, over an hour away, in the wee hours of the morning and admitted to the ICU. There I spent a few days while the doctors tried to figure out what was wrong with me. Eventually, they sent me for an emergency surgery to remove my gallbladder. But in the final analysis, the surgeon (who had been my breast surgeon) admitted that he did not think that what ailed me was my gallbladder. I slowly recovered in the aftermath. The doctors, my oncologist, pulmonologist and the surgeon remarked that my bloodwork almost suggested an allergic reaction of some sort. However, usually when one has an allergic reaction to chemotherapy it is immediate. Whereas, I had been receiving Taxol infusions without incident and my sepsis had occurred hours later after an infusion, not the usual scenario.
Recently, the substack of Lawyerlisa noted a study that spoke to the fact that Taxol is a nano medicine and can cause adverse reactions not unlike what is being seen with the mRNA vaccines. At the time of my chemotherapy, I had no idea. Upon reading the study and reflecting back on the episode that landed me in the ICU, as well as my history of autoimmune issues/immune system dsyfunction, I have to wonder if my reaction was due to the nano technology/mechanism that Taxol uses. It certainly make me wonder. My brain quickly wonders as well if any studies have been done as to whether or not adverse reactions to Taxol in people with autoimmune conditions have been done. Are unsuspecting cancer patients being harmed by a drug that while given to help keep cancer at bay may in fact be wreaking havoc in other ways?
I do believe that allopathic western medicine is shortsighted in its efforts to procure health. Often issues are addressed in a vacuum or in a silo, with little regard for treating the person as a whole, both physically, mentally, and emotionally. We are also to blame for wanting quick fixes to our health issues and looking to pills to make us feel better or make us healthy. I have begun to think that part of the issue is that we, and the esteemed “experts” peddling pharmaceuticals, do not recognize and appreciate adequately the complex and intricate nature of our beings. We may take a pill to address one problem, and in doing so, create three other issues. Yet, what efforts are underway in modern medicine to take a more holistic approach? Not enough.
I was considered young at the time of my breast cancer diagnosis. If data and statistics are the measure, I should not have had breast cancer. My profile had me as a very low risk patient.
So, one might ask, how is it that at the age of 45 my breasts were riddled with cancer? A decade earlier, when faced with infertility, I had undergone fertility treatments. Big pharma’s answer to infertility, especially if it is unexplained as it was in my case (although signs pointed to an immune system issue) is to douse one with estrogen enhancing the production of eggs by the ovaries.
I can remember asking about whether there were any risks associated with such measures. The usual refrain, safe and effective, was the answer. That is, we have no data to support the idea that such treatments cause problems in women. And yet, I am now left wondering if heavy doses of estrogen for fertility treatment was the equivalent of pouring Miracle-Gro on my estrogen driven cancer.
We all have cancer cells circulating in our bodies, rogue cells with abnormal growth that our immune system when healthy hunts down. But what happens when you receive medication or treatment that causes those rogue cells to outpace one’s immune system? Consider that part of the explanation for the turbo cancers and the folks who are seeing their cancer re-emerge with a vengeance after the mRNA covid jab, is that the shots suppressed part of the immune system that protects against potential cancer cells in circulation. McCullough and others warned us about the effects on the mRNA jab on our innate immune system in 2022, including the impact of the toxic jabs on our immune systems’ cancer surveillance activity.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35436552/
I opted not to take the COVID jab because of my autoimmune history, but I remember how they pressed for cancer survivors to be among the first jabbed. They spoke of how much more at risk we were than the average person to complications from COVID. I am grateful that I did not take the jab not only because it could have triggered an autoimmune disease in me like it did in my mother, but because it would have put me at risk of another cancer diagnosis.
I also want to note, that the pressure to take the jab, was immense and persistent from many sectors. Healthcare providers, friends, family, neighbors joined the chorus of fear mongering and virtue signaling as I buried my nose in my own research. It was not always easy, and there were days when I had to face down my own fear “what if I am wrong.” What if I got COVID and died. I remember telling my kids that if that were to happen, I wanted them to know that I made my own choice. One day I remember laying in bed with a temperature of 103 while my husband was out of town and wondering if I had COVID and if this was the beginning of the end.
My point is, I had my suspicions early on that we were not being told the truth about covid, but I was not immune to the fear mongering in the early stages of the pandemic. That being said, I always knew that what I wanted more than anything and was committed to was the right to make an informed decision and my own decision. My experience with breast cancer and then my toxic implants had taught me that that right could save my life.
I wanted the right to assess the risks and benefits that were personal to me and not be told that I must do something. In a breast cancer support group that I use to attend, we would often laugh amongst ourselves about how quick some “experts” were to dismiss our concerns or demand that we follow their advice. We would chuckle and say, “well as long as they are willing to die for us” meaning that it is easy for them to dismiss one’s questions or concerns because they do not have skin in the game.
As I have stated in prior essays, right before the pandemic the education space had been such an eye opener for me regarding the lies peddled by the fin/tech elite that I was cautious relative to the pandemic because I saw the fingerprints of the same actors all over the solutions being offered to us. I also had the benefit of fellow researchers in the education space that had kept me abreast of the Agenda 2030 and NWO “build back better” propaganda and had hypothesized early on that the pandemic was designed to demolish and decimate the West and society as we knew it. In short, that the powers that be were anxious to usher in a “new normal.”
I can forgive those that were driven by fear who did not yet have reason to distrust Gates et al or the government, but as more information has come to light and is easily accessible for those who want to look, it becomes harder to ignore the continued virtue signaling or the apologists for the “experts” who led many to slaughter. Common sense and a few well framed searches online provide the thread that when pulled unravel much of the narrative of the past three years.
If we, especially those weaponized by fear against their family and friends, cannot learn from this and recognize and respect that we each have a right to make an informed decision, then we will be doomed to repeat our mistakes, much to the delight of those busy predicting more pandemics. And remember that when they promise personalized medicine, they are not actually talking about medicine and choices personal to you. They are actually talking about reducing the practice of medicine to algorithmns and computer programs, which ultimately strips humanity from consideration in making personal health choices.
I agree with Margaret Anna Alice that “mistakes were not made" by those who committed crimes against humanity. But mistakes were made by those who trusted and continue to trust those who blatantly lied to us. Those individuals have a responsibility now to acknowledge their mistake in trusting the experts or else we do not stand a chance in hell of holding the perpetrators accountable and preventing a repeat of the hell and horror many have endured.
Stand by for Part II about my toxic implants, recalled by the FDA and how they poisoned me….and I once again had to push back against the “experts.”
Thank you for sharing your medical experiences and trying to educate people. As a cancer survivor, you may be interested in the research done on fenbenzadole and a different product called VaLasta. There is a fenbenzadole substack. I researched alternative treatments for a friend who developed a Stage IV turbo cancer of unknown origin. She chose traditional chemo and Keytruda which have arrested it for now.
Laura, I read this and gosh, I felt so horrible and panicky for you. What a "revolting development"
(personal, often used description)
As an olden nurse, I ask way too many questions and often get dismissed for asking too many questions. All questions are relevant - you have had a harsh harsh time with this. I am really sorry.
I have dense breasts too. I do believe it was the fertility treatments I have three friends that developed BC. Sadly, all three died.
I am thrilled you are a survivor.
Thank you for writing and sharing your horrible ordeal.
You are a survivor and God Bless you for the rest of your very long long life.