Hazel - Interview 05  

Hazel - Interview 05

Age at Interview: 74
Sex: Female
Background: Hazel was formerly a company secretary, and is now an independent advocate for quality in research and healthcare. She is widowed with 2 grown-up children. Ethnic background/nationality: White British.

Brief outline:Hazel learnt she had breast cancer (DCIS) after screening in 1991. After surgery she was asked to be in a trial comparing no further treatment with radiotherapy, tamoxifen, or radiotherapy and tamoxifen combined. She declined to take part. (You can see Hazel talking more about her experiences on the Healthtalkonline site on Breast cancer screening, Interview 17 & DCIS, Interview 26).

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Think carefully before taking part in a trial, and try not to be too influenced by family. They want the best for you, but they don’t know what you really want.

 



I’d advise them to approach it slowly, carefully, taking account of as much advice as they wanted or could get. I would warn them that it can be very difficult to cope with your nearest and dearest, because they want the best for you, but they don’t know what you want. And it, they can very heavily influence you in a direction that you might have actually preferred not to go in. But you can’t discount it, you see. This is one of the factors, I think. You asked - the previous question, you can’t actually say until the moment arrives. So I would warn them that they would have to be, try and be detached from the seriousness of what it was they were trying to decide, be very objective about it, which of course is impossible because it’s an utterly subjective thing, and it’s where the subjective and the objective collide that the problem lies.  

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