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Not wanting to treat cervical cancer risk because babies


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From Erika's large families Facebook today:

READER QUESTION,

"I'm trying to find someone who has faced a similar situation as I am facing now. Please let me know if you have or you know someone who has.

I have cervical dysplasia, stage 2, (CINI 2) with high grade HPV. I haven't been sub typed to see which strain of HPV I have (16 and 18 are the ones that go to cervical cancer.) I'm told I need LEEP surgery. I'm really concerned about having fertility issues afterwards and/or having problems carrying a pregnancy to full term. I do not want to have a miscarriage late in pregnancy. I currently have 5 wonderful children and I desire more. To most people, that would sound crazy. I feel as if I'm talking to somebody who can relate with me.

I went to a naturopath doctor to try something natural, vaginal suppositories and concentrated vitamin and herbal supplements. However, she told me I'd have to stop breastfeeding. I have nursed all of my babies past a year and desire to do the same with my current baby who is 10 months old. I do baby led weaning, so, I'm not at all close to weaning him.

I was hoping to find somebody who has continued breastfeeding while treating their cervical dysplasia naturally. Do you know of anyone? Or, maybe someone who has actually had cervical cancer and continued to breastfeed? Thank you so much for listening."

Anyone else find this ludicrous? Five babies and you don't want to treat yourself with a very effective procedure because you want more kids? And you want to try some natural remedy but not if you have to stop Breastfeeding? What happens when you get cancer, will you let yourself get chemo or just die?

Here are the responses:

One person posts a natural pills link

One says her dysphasia went away on its own

One person had the treatment and still had more kids

Another person had a friend who treated it naturally and lived to tell about it.

One person will pray for her

One person shares a long story about her births that is irrelevant and says God is the great physician.

I think this particularly annoyed me this morning because my daughters friends mom died over the weekend. A Sunday school teacher. Devestated the family and I can't imagine any mom not fighting and doing her all to live for the kids she has. I know a few people who've had that cervical procedure through Planned Parenthood (irony?) and they've been told they will probably still have kids.

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Wow. She's an idiot. She's been diagnosed with a highly treatable disease, and she doesn't want to have to most effective procedure done, because she wants to have the ability to have more babies. How about living for the children that you already have??? Also, this should serve as a reason why you need to have your daughters get the HPV vaccine as soon as they are old enough. Shame on you Erika.

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The effect of invasive cervical cancer on future pregnancies is much greater than the effect of a LEEP procedure. If she has persistence of the high risk HPV types her risk of progressing to cervical cancer is pretty darn high and all the herbal suppositories in the world won't help. On the other hand, a fair number of CIN 2 regresses- especially if there isn't persistence of HPV so usually LEEP isn't recommended in young women unless they have HPV persistence.

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This is ridiculous, so much fuckwittery. Encouraging someone not to have relatively low risk treatment because baybeez? Ugh. If she has this treatment she

will most likely avoid developing cancer AND probably keep her fertility! Not to mention she already has 5 kids. But you know, in true fundie style;

it's better to risk everything including your life for the sake of hypothetical future babies than to focus on your life and family as it is. Again, ugh.

This kind of thinking is just fucked up. It's one thing to have opinions based on scientific fact; it's another

thing entirely to ignore the science and treat your opinion as fact.

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You can't have babies when you're dead. She should consider that.

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You can't have babies when you're dead. She should consider that.

Exactly. Most women would get the treatment because they understand this fact. Also, women who have children generally like to be around for the children that are already here.

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Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. Reading this makes me so mad. Unfortunately, this isn't just a fundy mentality. Baby fever does weird things to people.

My cousin "B" was diagnosed with cervical cancer 4 years ago. She had a 3 year old daughter at that time (the result of extensive fertility treatments), and wanted to "try for the boy." B has a Master's degree in nutrition, and is married to a man who is a scientist working for the Department of Agriculture. These people are not idiots at first glance.

She was given the option of an effective, immediate surgical procedure after diagnosis. She already struggled with fertility, and this procedure would have severely compromised any lingering hope of future children. (To put this in context, her daughter was born after at least 5 miscarriages and more than 8 years of fertility treatments. B was 37 when her daughter was born.) The cancer continued to grow as she went from doctor to doctor, specialist to specialist, trying to find SOMEONE who would be willing to IMPLANT MORE EMBRYOS in the hopes of carrying the wished-for boy to term before treating her cancer. The extended family was horrified. Offers were made by female cousins to act as a surrogate for her, if she would just accept treatment. B refused, and became progressively sicker and weaker, eventually taking a leave of absence from her job. Her mother moved 1000+ miles to take care of the toddler since B was too weak to chase her around the house. While this was going on, B's immediate family stopped communicating with the extended family.

Due to the information black-out, I didn't get any real-time updates. However, I found out about a year ago that B was ultimately compelled to get a complete hysterectomy. The untreated cancer had spread to her uterus and then her lymph-nodes, resulting in a year of chemotherapy and a very bleak diagnosis for a few months. Thankfully, she did survive and has been cancer-free for a little over a year. Her health has continued to be an issue.

I don't begrudge anyone the desire to have a family, so long as they are prepared to care for the family properly. But it blows my mind that this facebook fundy and my cousin are in a group of women that are willing to gamble with their lives to have just one more baby. This isn't about saving the life of an existing child, or having a first, SINGLE child. Maybe, just maybe, someone could make a case for this level of blindness and risk in one of those circumstances. However, both the fundy and B already had children, and both were properly educated about risks and potential harm to their bodies. If all life is precious, what about the life of the mother??

Sorry for the epic monologue. This just really hit a nerve with me.

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The more fun question is how does a fundie get HPV, a STD? A dozen years into their fellowshiping?

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It magically appeared.

Herpes isn't particular. Kids can get herpes from sharing a cup with a parent who has a minor flare of oral herpes. Grow up, give your partner oral sex, and you can pass it. Boom. Genital herpes, even if both are virgins.

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Also, this should serve as a reason why you need to have your daughters get the HPV vaccine as soon as they are old enough. Shame on you Erika.

The vaccine targets 4 strains, not all of them, and 16 and 18 aren't the only ones that can turn to cancer. We won't be getting our kids the vaccine. We'll be giving them birth control and condoms with education on their use.

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What is so mind-bogglingly stupid about this is she has 5 kids already, and she'd rather die than not get to have more. That's so selfish. She's not having kids because she loves them, but because she wants to collect them. I know having another baby at all always carries some risk, but that risk is teeny tiny. This? She could die, like probably will, and her existing kids come second to having more babies.

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Herpes isn't particular. Kids can get herpes from sharing a cup with a parent who has a minor flare of oral herpes. Grow up, give your partner oral sex, and you can pass it. Boom. Genital herpes, even if both are virgins.

HPV isn't herpes. It's human papilloma virus and the ones that cause cervical cancer can only be spread through sexual contact. There are other strains (common warts) that can be spread through casual contact but they don't cause cancer.

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The vaccine targets 4 strains, not all of them, and 16 and 18 aren't the only ones that can turn to cancer. We won't be getting our kids the vaccine. We'll be giving them birth control and condoms with education on their use.

Why aren't you getting the vaccine? I was on the fence about getting it for my kids. But after talking to my doctor, and talking to my cousin who's an OBGYN (and a whole list of others), I decided to go ahead and get the vaccine. Every single health professional I've spoken with has a positive outlook on this vaccine and has gotten it for their own children. We started at the 11 year old appointment for my oldest. Even if the vaccine only helps with 4 strains, it's better than no help at all.

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Either the woman got it from a partner before marriage or she got it from her husband, who had other partners before marriage (or someone has an affair during marriage). It can lie dormant for many years. She could have been a virgin and gotten it from her husband but someone had another sexual partner.

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For those who are sexually active, condoms may lower the risk of HPV infection. To be most effective, they should be used with every sex act, from start to finish. Condoms may also lower the risk of developing HPV-related diseases, such as genital warts and cervical cancer. But HPV can infect areas that are not covered by a condom - so condoms may not fully protect against HPV.

http://www.cdc.gov/hpv/prevention.html

My daughter will be getting the vaccine.

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I thought that the LEEP procedure didn't generally impact the ability to carry to term anyway? Except for maybe increasing the likelihood of needing a curtleridge(? Spelling)

I could swear I've had a couple friends who had this done and then went on to have kids with no issues. Or am I confused?

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From Erika's large families Facebook today:

Anyone else find this ludicrous? Five babies and you don't want to treat yourself with a very effective procedure because you want more kids? And you want to try some natural remedy but not if you have to stop Breastfeeding? What happens when you get cancer, will you let yourself get chemo or just die?

Here are the responses:

One person posts a natural pills link

One says her dysphasia went away on its own

One person had the treatment and still had more kids

Another person had a friend who treated it naturally and lived to tell about it.

One person will pray for her

One person shares a long story about her births that is irrelevant and says God is the great physician.

I think this particularly annoyed me this morning because my daughters friends mom died over the weekend. A Sunday school teacher. Devestated the family and I can't imagine any mom not fighting and doing her all to live for the kids she has. I know a few people who've had that cervical procedure through Planned Parenthood (irony?) and they've been told they will probably still have kids.

I knew of a woman about 25 or 30 years ago that didn't want her reproductive cancer treated because she's have to wean. (I don't know if she had ovarian cancer or cervical.) Anyway, she decided on a course of treatment that would be less effective, but she'd be allowed to continue breastfeeding. A few years later, the cancer killed her. Now wouldn't it have been a hell of a lot less traumatic for her daughter to have been weaned rather than that daughter to have lost her mom at such a young age? This case still makes me angry.

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I guess in her world your life's not worth squat if you can't pop out baybeez. Does she not have a headship who would like to have her around ? I'm guessing she is still pretty asymptomatic and it hasn't really sunk in. By the time it occurs to her to get her ass to an oncologist she'll be up a creek.

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Obviously the children that she already has aren't worth it. Despicable and selfish to the core.

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Why aren't you getting the vaccine? I was on the fence about getting it for my kids. But after talking to my doctor, and talking to my cousin who's an OBGYN (and a whole list of others), I decided to go ahead and get the vaccine. Every single health professional I've spoken with has a positive outlook on this vaccine and has gotten it for their own children. We started at the 11 year old appointment for my oldest. Even if the vaccine only helps with 4 strains, it's better than no help at all.

Because we will be teaching condom-use and smartly picking partners. The chance of getting HPV with proper condom use and not sleeping with anyone willing is very tiny. We aren't going to run to vaccines for everything under the sun. If our girls decide in their later teen years that they want it, at that point they'll be close enough to legal adults, so we'd support it. But we are not going to inject 11-year-olds with this vaccine.

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Because we will be teaching condom-use and smartly picking partners. The chance of getting HPV with proper condom use and not sleeping with anyone willing is very tiny. .

I'm sorry, I know this was a typo, and not a subject to joke about. But I got a really funny picture in my head of you having the sex talk with your girls.....and them wondering how they are going to get these boys to use condoms, turning down the ones who are interested in them and then forcing the unwilling ones to have sex -- all so they don't get a disease :lol: :lol: it could be very confusing.

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Because we will be teaching condom-use and smartly picking partners. The chance of getting HPV with proper condom use and not sleeping with anyone willing is very tiny. We aren't going to run to vaccines for everything under the sun. If our girls decide in their later teen years that they want it, at that point they'll be close enough to legal adults, so we'd support it. But we are not going to inject 11-year-olds with this vaccine.

I would not begin to disagree with someone else's parenting choices (when they're not obviously endangering, and this isn't), so, if you don't want to get your girls the HPV vaccine, more power to you. But, as far as your supreme confidence that your family sex education will inoculate your girls against sexual risk factors, let me present myself as an example of when all the best intentions did not produce the optimal behavior. The first person I knew who had HIV, I was about 10 (my best friend's father, gay and amicably divorced from her mother)... this was way before any of my peers had firsthand knowledge of someone with HIV, and before it was curable. I had good sex ed, both at home and school, and a good relationship with my parents. However, despite the fact that I KNEW all of the bad outcomes, I had a brief but intense period of non-safe sex, and/or sex under the influence (near the end of and just after college, after a breakup with my first very serious long-term relationship). I did some really stupid shit, and luckily didn't end up with anything serious, but I think if the HPV vaccine had been available to me, I would have been glad to have had it (looking back). I guess I would just say: don't underestimate the risk-taking behaviors caused by adolescent brains.

And as a side note, my daughter (and any future daughters, and sons, too) will absolutely be getting the HPV vaccine; any bit of protection that I can give her, I will. I know that it doesn't protect against all of the cancer-causing HPV strains, but some is better than none, in my opinion.

ETA: It only takes only one time for one decision to become a life-changer.

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let me present myself as an example of when all the best intentions did not produce the optimal behavior. The first person I knew who had HIV, I was about 10 (my best friend's father, gay and amicably divorced from her mother)... this was way before any of my peers had firsthand knowledge of someone with HIV, and before it was curable. r.

HIV / AIDs is still NOT curable. It's generally manageable. With the correct medications. That people have to take FOREVER. Each of which can have their own awful side effects. I was on anti-virals for another condition - absolutely, positively no fun. And having HIV /AIDs means you always have to consider the disease, and make it your first concern, when making any relationship or reproductive decisions.

I knw it wasn't the main point of your post-- but I think people often tend to forget that "manageable" with any serious, chronic disease can be extremely difficult, expensive and often there will still be significant life altering symptoms - even when the disease is considered under control. And is completely different than " curable" . When you're cured of some horrible disease you no longer have to deal with it every single day.

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