The see-saw of second opinions

Sometimes getting second opinions can make your head spin!

I’ve always encouraged everyone to get second, third…as many as it takes opinions. It certainly worked for many people in my book.

True to my word, today I went for a second opinion regarding the tumor in my liver. As some of you may recall, I went out of town to see a doctor about selective internal radiation treatments (SIRT). When I got there, I was told it wouldn’t help me and that surgery was the way to go.

Today I consulted another surgeon in Cincinnnati who had the complete opposite opinion and thought I should go with SIRT. How could two doctors have such conflicting ideas? Confused, Mike and I stepped outside and weighed our options. Should we get a third opinion from another surgeon to break the tie? We decided to go ahead and consult with the radiation interventionist the surgeon here recommended to see what he had to say about SIRT.

When I got home, I watched a Joel Osteen episode I had taped. He talked about asking and receiving signs from God about decisions or future outcomes. It was really inspiring and made me conclude that maybe God could be the tie-breaker!

I think it was God who inspired me to finally contact Miriam, who had inflammatory breast cancer with massive lesions in her liver in ’08. She did SIRT and is completely free of tumors today. She was a wonderful woman, and I’ll share more about her in future posts.

I recommend anyone looking at this alternative to go to www.beatlivertumors.org, which is run by another miracle survivor named Suzanne Lindley. Suzanne is a great advocate for the treatments and holds an annual conference to spread hope and information about treating liver tumors. Suzanne had given me Miriam’s contact information weeks ago.

I read other success stories like Miriam’s on the site, which also helped me make a decision.So it looks like we are going to give SIRT a try. Stay tuned for more updates.