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Breast Cancer

Living with Breast Cancer Treatments: Personal Stories

Summary & Participants

There are many options for treating breast cancer, including surgery, hormonal treatments, radiation and chemotherapy. All of these treatments have potential physical and emotional side effects. Discover how two women went through treatment and what they did to cope.

Medically Reviewed On: July 11, 2008

Webcast Transcript

GENEROSA GRANA, MD: Another important factor is the hair loss. It is important to acknowledge that this will happen. It is important to acknowledge that it's not life-threatening, but it's very emotionally devastating for a woman to lose her hair.

DAWN COLUCCI: After the seventeenth day, having received my chemo, my hair started falling out. Which was frightening and something that I don't think any woman would want to have to go through. So as it started falling out on my pillowcase, I decided just to shave it off.

And I refused to wear a wig, even though I had purchased one. I did scarves. I did caps. I did different color scarves and different kinds of caps from all over. It was fun, actually. That part was fun, but you were always made aware of the fact that you had no hair on your head. But you can live with it.

ANNOUNCER: Another form of therapy to treat breast cancer involves the use of hormonal therapy.

When a tumor grows in response to hormones such as estrogen, hormonal therapies can reduce the levels, or block the effects, of these hormones, thus starving the tumor. The choice of hormonal therapy depends on how advanced the disease is and whether the woman is pre-menopausal or post-menopausal and on how advanced the disease is.

For the post-menopausal woman with an early stage breast cancer, a 5-year course of tamoxifen is the standard treatment. Another option is Arimidex, which studies suggest may be equally or more effective with fewer side effects.

For patients with locally advanced and advanced breast cancers, other drugs have been approved for hormonal therapy.

Fortunately, compared to chemotherapy, women on hormonal treatment will experience relatively few side effects, the most common being hot flashes, which can be treated with medication.

ANNOUNCER: Each woman will react differently to breast cancer treatment but survivors point out: it helps to know what's ahead and understand there are ways to cope.

CAROLE CHAMBERLAIN: They have to ask these doctors everything. Am I going to be sick to my stomach? How long is going to last? How many treatments am I going to have? What's the outcome afterwards? And of course, they can't always answer that question. But you have to ask your questions? You have to put your fright away.

DAWN COLUCCI: What I did was I made the best of everything on a day-to-day basis. If I wasn't feeling well, I would just take it easy or I would surround myself with loved ones, with family, with friends.

The treatments, although they are very harsh, they do work, and I'm an example of that. And I'm very pleased with what I've had done. And let me say, that should it happen again, I wouldn't do anything different.

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