Beyond Early Detection
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What are the known causes of breast cancer? What are the risk factors? How can you recognize a cancerous tumour? These are a few of the worrisome questions that Sharon Batt answers in clear, simple language in A New Look at Breast Cancer: Beyond Early Detection. A breast cancer survivor herself, she is familiar with all aspects of the subject: medical controversies, misdiagnosis, a patient’s right to choose treatment, and more. Published in 1996, the 40-page booklet is an indispensable and reassuring reference guide to breast cancer, its prevention and treatment. |
You can read the following chapters in the booklet:
- Who is “at risk”?
What causes breast cancer?
Questions about detection : breast self-exam and mammography
Something’s wrong... Is it cancer?
Getting your emotional bearings
Making informed medical decisions
The breast cancer advocacy movement
They’ve read A New Look at Breast Cancer: Beyond Early Detection
The book is easy to read and leaves the reader with a sense of being
up-to-date. This book brought me some new information - the significance
of the stages, the meanings of some symptoms, the whys of the medical
procedures, and the areas of controversy among doctors themselves.
As a recent survivor of breast cancer, and as someone who keeps up with
women’s health issues, my immediate reaction to this booklet was "Wouldn’t
it be valuable if every young woman could read this material at a time in
her life when she is involved in life-long learning?" What better time to
acquire the information that can help her develop a lifestyle based on knowledge
of family (genetic) background, current scientific findings and approaches
to health issues including breast cancer . This knowledge becomes a baseline
and encourages women to keep abreast of new information as it develops.
Unlike most breast cancer information booklets that I’ve seen, this
one doesn’t pretend to have simplistic answers to difficult questions.
It doesn’t claim that if you just do your breast self exam, get your
mammogram and do what your doctor says, then breast cancer can be beaten.
In fact, it steers away from clichés and glib answers to highly complex
questions for which there are no answers. As Sharon Batt says, perhaps the
most honest response when experts disagree, is to present both sides of
the issue to each women, with the proviso that given the current level of
evidence, absolute certainty is an impossibility, and then allow each women
to make her own informed decision. This is the aim of this booklet and this
is exactly what it has accomplished.
[...] Batt emphasizes taking the time to explore your options, and set
up your support network, since breast cancer is usually slow growing and
treatment is not an emergency.
