Breast Cancer Survivor Advises People to be Their Own Advocate in Their Health Care

City of Hope patient Christal Love is here to share her personal breast cancer journey. After receiving suboptimal cancer care, Love sought a second opinion and found City of Hope, a compassionate cancer research and treatment organization in Los Angeles. She has learned to always ask her care team questions and champion what she thinks is right for her. Love has been cancer-free for five years and recalls how she stopped using products containing parabens after she was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 39. Love strongly believes in making sure women know the importance of taking the proper precautions when using everyday personal care products and is happy to share her story as an example of how she changed her lifestyle after a cancer diagnosis. Find out more about City of Hope at  www.cityofhope.org.

Christal Love’s Story

When she was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 39, she struggled to get her doctors to believe her when she described her symptoms and adverse reactions to medications. After months of bouts of dizziness and painful hair loss, she was still being told these side effects were “all in her head”, so Christal sought out a second opinion.

Christal decided to begin treatment at City of Hope, a research center and hospital in Duarte, CA with a specific division dedicated to studying issues of health equity. As soon as she began receiving care at City of Hope, her oncologist was able to pinpoint that the root of some of her side effects was the medications she had been prescribed. Her oncologist also found that though chemotherapy had somewhat shrunk the tumors, they were still much larger than they should have been at this point in the treatment.

Love decided to have a double mastectomy. That was in 2018, and today Love is still cancer free.