CancerChoices Blog

Should I ever have cancer, I would ask my functional medicine doctor to help me figure out if I had imbalances that could drive cancer processes.

One of the Cancer Help Program alums, Myra Eastman, offered to share her experience and her beautiful artwork—inspired by our work together.

Fully attending to your patient while assessing their pain can powerfully activate belief: a story for health professionals.

Dance as a healing practice is an important throughline in the performance, as it was during my treatment and recovery.

Suz Mondello, a friend of Commonweal and alumna of the Cancer Help Program, speaks with CancerChoices staff Michael Lerner about her four-year journey with cancer.

Suz Mondello, a friend of Commonweal and alumna of the Cancer Help Program, speaks with CancerChoices staff Nancy Hepp and Laura Pole about her four-year journey with cancer.

Dealing with something as difficult as cancer, partnerships can easily unravel. Or, if we can manage it, we weave new connections as we call on inner and outer resources previously unknown.

Suz Mondello, a friend of Commonweal and alumna of the Cancer Help Program, speaks with CancerChoices staff Nancy Hepp and Laura Pole about her four-year journey with cancer.

Suz Mondello, a friend of Commonweal and alumna of the Cancer Help Program, speaks with CancerChoices staff Nancy Hepp and Laura Pole about her four-year journey with cancer.

When mom took me to her doctor, I was barely able to breathe. I looked at my lungs on the X-ray—one was white and the other black. Shortly after, I was surrounded by doctors and nurses, family and relatives. I had no idea what was happening.

The creative expression in this painting and poetry journey supported me in approaching the original trauma of my cancer detection, diagnosis, treatment, recuperation, and life afterwards.

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There are three big areas that we can base our lives on: the past, the present, and the anticipation of the future. I focus on the now. It’s the only thing I can do.

I opened the email with my monthly blood lab results. My tumor markers doubled from 33 to 70 in a month. So much for stable.

Anton explained he realized after sleeping so well the night before, that he had not had a full night’s sleep since moving to New York.

Now that she’s completed her chemotherapy, she wants to explore healing practices and therapies that will help keep the cancer from recurring.

Letting people in to help was the greatest gift of grace we gave and received.

Harold learned to grow and examine what was needed for healing beyond just his cancer during treatment. This is an opportunity to exercise hope and understand that love is the answer.

The very challenging first step is the private admission and acceptance that you need help.

My new life was about to begin, but I didn’t know that yet. 

BCCT/CancerChoices asked integrative oncology navigator and breast cancer survivor Lindsay McDonell to explain chemosensitivity testing for fellow cancer survivors.

I’m so grateful for all the love and support I have experienced on this healing journey.

I was too happily innocent about the cancer world and said two now-remarkable things … “Thank goodness … it is not appendicitis! What is stage 5?”

Three years ago, at age 45, I found a lump in my breast that would mark the end of my life as I knew it.

It was only when I was diagnosed in 2015 with stage 3 breast cancer that I realised how little I actually knew, and how ill-prepared many patients are to face the hurdles in front of them.

Herb defied all odds to shape his life, his career, and later his journey with metastatic kidney cancer.

I will continue to treat my body and my spirit with ayahuasca, and work to teach others to respect it.

Janet Spitzer, MD, recounts her journey with breast cancer in a series of videos.

Janet Spitzer, MD, recounts her journey with breast cancer in a series of videos.

Janet Spitzer, MD, recounts her journey with breast cancer in a series of videos.

As humans we strive for certainty every day, every hour, yet now I must learn how to be with uncertainty, every day.

Five years into living with recurrence, I’m more focused on asking ‘What’s the next thing?’ and researching therapies put before me to figure out if they are likely to help me.

Through the sadness and fear something happened. I realized I wanted to live.

It never occurred to me that cannabis could have therapeutic value.

The exploration revolves around finding peace and purpose in a life that has been touched but not defined or limited (yet) by cancer.

The 7 Lifestyle Practices are so fundamental to overall good health that you’ll benefit from adopting them even if cancer weren’t your main concern.

Complementary therapies can help in so many important ways both as you prepare for surgery for breast cancer or any other type of cancer and during your recuperation after surgery.

When I got diagnosed with a second breast cancer earlier this year, I turned instinctively to acupuncture.

When she was diagnosed with breast cancer a year ago, we were catapulted from being professionals into the role of patient and caregiver.

The words suddenly shifted their meaning and he realized that they were addressed to him personally.

My entry into the club that no one wants to be a member of came 19 years ago when I had breast cancer—for the first time.

I used to be a total skeptic when it came to intuition.

No one ever expected I would do this well and be alive and thriving this many years postdiagnosis.

Lindsay McDonell has come to believe that chemosensitivity testing is one of the most important tests to have done.