Carol stopped searching on the Internet as she found the range of information too wide.

Transcript

I went on the Internet and I think it was maybe the worst thing I could have done. There are a lot of scary things out on the Internet and it’s hard to filter all of that, especially because I had sort of the diagnosis and I had the doctors. I had I made sure to get copies of everything, everything so I have a file with the results of everything that I’ve done and everything that the doctors have done but then you have words that you don’t understand or concepts that you don’t understand and you Google them. There’s such a wide range of information out there you don’t really know. You know there’s people that say that chemo is horrible and that nobody should do chemo and that there are other options besides the chemo and there’s a healthy diet you know certain diets, etc. All the way to “You have to have chemo.” I had to stop, I actually had to stop going on the Internet.

There are a lot of women out there with breast cancer and so I had several people who offered their experiences to me and that was very helpful. That actually helped me choose the hospital closest to me because a girlfriend of mine said that she had gone there and she gave me the name of the doctor. So I got her doctor because she raved about him. I also went to a cancer centre and they were very helpful also.

They had a lot of pamphlets, a lot of books; one of them was how to help my children through this which was a big thing for me. I didn’t want them to be too scarred by all of this. In the end I didn’t even… I had… there was a book that I could read to them but the kids are very resilient and very okay. They were okay; my oldest one probably understood more the implications of breast cancer and the fact that in theory I could die. So she was probably the most affected by it. The younger ones just wanted to know about my hair, how come I was going lose my hair and then they said “Okay and can I have lunch now?” And that was really the end of it.

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More content

• Chemotherapy – Carol
  Carol felt very sick after the first chemotherapy, so the nurses advised her to take the anti-nausea medication for the next round.
• Chimiothérapie – Carol
  Carol a été très malade après son premier traitement de chimiothérapie. Les infirmières lui ont alors conseillé de prendre les médicaments contre la nausée pour le second traitement.
• Finding and sharing information – Carol
  Carol stopped searching on the Internet as she found the range of information too wide.
• Understanding the diagnosis – Carol
  Carol describes how medical breast cancer knowledge has increased but she is not fully reassured; there is still this knowing in her head that it could possible come back.
• Talking to children about cancer – Carol
  Carol has four children (between 6 and 11 years old). But it was her oldest daughter who was most aware of the possibility of dying.
• Physical activity and diet changes – Carol
  Carol sometimes found it hard to maintain a healthy diet, especially with kids and while feeling tired.
• Follow-up care and the risk of recurrence – Carol
  Carol had been told that she would be closely watched for 10 years. She felt this was a long time to live in a state of fearfulness.
• How it affects family and friends – Carol
  It is not a big deal for Carol to go out in her local community.