Anyone know what kind of treatment Suzanne Somers got over the years?

It's my understand that AI cuts in half the chance of recurrence. My type of cancer -- lobular -- had what my doctor calls "a long tail," meaning, if you plot recurrences out on a graph, the chance never really disappears. But it's SUCH an individual decision! I stayed on AI for 12 years -- by choice -- for the sake of my daughter. (I lost my own mother to multiple myeloma, one of those deaths that give cancer its bad name.) But after 3 fractures, I decided Enough was Enough. But again, it boils down to which scenario repulses you the most. That's why there can't really be a "standard of care." There can just be recommendations that patients accept or reject.

Hi I face this decision now. I was a "low" 15% estrogen positive, stage 0, grade 3 DCIS- in Situ. Clean margins, no lymph node involvement.
68 years old, no history of BC. Oncologist said calcifications were probably caused by the bio-identical hormones I was on.
Who knows what to do?
All of a sudden you have BC and have all these decisions to make with no frame of reference.
We research and do the best we can 🙂

Thanks all for your comments. I guess it all comes down to what you are able and willing to handle. The trade offs are there so that everyone can make their own choices. I did have 15 days of radiation and my OncoDX said only a 3% chance for recurrence in 9 years on AI alone, didn't give numbers for if I had both. So I wonder what it would be with radiation alone and no AI. I've been on the AI for a year. Inquiring minds, ya know? Hopefully you all make the best choices for yourselves. Hugs.

My MO doubled my OncotypeDx recurrence score when I asked the risk for no AI but yes to radiation. I don’t know if this is actually a formula but it was within 2% of the answer from my radiation oncologist!

Hmmm, interesting. I'm thinking they probably plug all the facts they've learned from experience in and come up with an average. Thanks for your reply.

This reminds me of something my mother's doctor told her many years ago: We know what the average prognosis is for this disease, but we don't know what *your* prognosis.

Good point. I myself like a kind of ballpark figure on things--like prognosis, life expectancy, even the weather, because this gives me info as to how to act (update a will, bring a sweater). However I do try to be aware of the profound uncertainty of life, both for "good"and "bad."

Exactly! Same here. That’s the only way you can make informed decisions.

If Somers did say in essence that the options are 20 years of living with the "aftermath" of conventional treatment or 19 years of thriving with alternative treatment, that is a logical fallacy known as a false dichotomy and assumes facts not in evidence. Outcomes are diverse and can be anything on a spectrum from cure to death. 1) Somers, in fact, mixed conventional treatments, like surgery and its many risks, with alternative treatments. There's a reason surgeons make you acknowledge risks and sign releases. 2) Bioidentical hormones are, in fact, chemicals, regardless of their derivation, cooked up by humans who are, one hopes, trained chemists who engage in best scientific practices. In the law, there is science, and then there is inadmissible junk science, with factors laid out in long-standing case law to determine which is which. 3) That said, I'm for everybody in this tough situation making their own choices for themselves, so Godspeed. There are unknowns no matter how you choose to address your own breast cancer, or we would all be much clearer about about what course would lead to the best outcome. Your body, your choice.

One size does not fit all. I read. I research and make the best decisions for me going forward. I pray and hope that my decisions and outcomes will allow me to live a quality of life for many years.