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. |
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Decision making under pressureThis guide, written by people who have been there, explores how to make decisions in response to your diagnosis. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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