What Are Your Options?
Your options in cancer care:
- Conventional (mainstream) care alone
- Integrating conventional and complementary care (usually best)
- Complementary cancer care alone (alternative cancer care, potentially risky)
- Palliative (comfort) care, with or without other therapies
The right choice depends on your goals, beliefs and resources.
![]() |
Start with your goals and beliefsThe "right" choice for you depends on your goals and beliefs, as well as your willingness and ability to undertake a course of action. What's "right" is different for each person. |
![]() |
Decision making under pressureThis guide, written by people who have been there, explores how to make decisions in response to your diagnosis. |
![]() |
Questions for your care providersAs you build a team that's devoted to supporting your healing, it helps to know what to ask as you meet with practitioners who specialize in various disciplines. |
![]() |
The spectrum of integrative careIntegrative cancer care encompasses everything from traditional Chinese medicine, which has been practiced for thousands of years, to the off-label use of modern-day pharmaceuticals. |
![]() |
Integrative protocols and plansIntegrative protocols, treatment plans, regimens and programs are unique "recipes" that draw on various sources to create customized approaches to cancer care. |
![]() |
Help navigating your optionsProfessional advocates and navigators can help you through the maze of options that you're faced with. |
Images from Creative Commons:
- Oliver Henze
- Véronique Debord-Lazaro
- Rajesh_India
- weixin
- Bob Leckridge
More Information
- BCCT: Financial Resources
- Triage Cancer
- OncoLink: OncoLife™ Survivorship Care Plan
- Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine: CanHEAL
- BCCT: Get Help: Healing Circles: Share Your Experience
- BCCT: Navigating BCCT by Stages on the Cancer Path
- American Society of Clinical Oncology: Cancer.Net