Trust your "Commonsense" along with your Oncologist

• By texaszan
• Posted November 13, 2008 at 12:16 pm
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>They also have killed hundreds of thousand of people with these very drugs. The truth "also" is they don't "CURE" Cancer either.

Tell that to my son-in-law who endured massive chemo and radiation and is alive 20 years later because of it. My brother did the diet, alternative route and has been gone for 20 years. Different things work for different people but you have to go by averages and studies. It's not just all "about the money". Our oncologist is running in the red because medicare won't reimburse him enough for the drugs he uses so he's donating them to his older patients. I'm so glad you're doing well and I really do believe diet and alternative treatments can have a good effect. I think if we all ate better and took better care of ourselves we'd have less cancer to begin with BUT chemo and radiation can cure cancer, they don't always but I have friends who are alive today because of them. To each his own.

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• By mpatten
• Posted November 13, 2008 at 12:42 pm
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texaszan, there are lot's of exceptions to the rule, but most of us are afraid to tell you about our experience because we are ostracized by those who only believe in modern medicines. I also fear in sharing my experience that what worked for me may not work for you. Another thing the doctors fail to tell us when telling us about the statistics. Our cancers even if the same type respond differently to treatment. I too have been told by my doctor that he didn't know what I was doing but that what ever it was to keep doing it. One of the reasons any studies that have been done (limited) show lack of response to alternative cures is that most that try the alternative medicines are those that the doctors say they can't help. What makes you think that alternative cures should help when the doctors don't even think their cut and burn treatment will help. Although I do believe in some cases alternatives could help.

The problem is that they don't do controlled studies on alternative cures because there is no money in it.
I hate to burst your bubble but it is mostly about the money. I am sure there are doctors and such out there that do care less about the money, but it certainly isn't the pharmaceutical companies. Please don't tell me you believe that they care more about the patient and the quality of life than they do the money. THEY ARE IN IT FOR THE MONEY!!!!!

togglea2 is right it is absolutely a matter of preference. I also drink eissac tea (look it up) and have lived longer than anyone expected. I have also done chemo and radiation, but the choice is mine. I have taken a break when ever I felt like the treatment had weakened my immune system so much that I started getting things like thrush.

My radiologist told me not so long ago that I again (I) have made the right decision in my treatment. I am not afraid to say no or I think I will wait. No one knows my body like I do and I pray for guidance from my higher power. I can only hope that I make the right decisions. After all I have a little more at stake that the doctors do.

The doctors are not taught in school about alternative cures or even alternatives that may help the symptoms from the medicines they give us. YES IT MAY BE MALPRACTICE TO TELL US TO TRY ALTERNATIVES BUT SHOULD THEY DISCOURAGE US WHEN THEY KNOW IT WONT HURT US?

Like togglea2 I respect the medical license, but my doctor is not GOD and is here in my opinion to help me make decisions not make them for me.

togglea2 is right that modern medicine really doesn't cure it just treats the symptoms... Think of most of the medicines that are on the market today for blood pressure, diabetes, even heart burn. Do you take them once and be cured or do you have to take them for ever.

Yes chemo and radiation save lives but they also maim and kill and take away from the precious time we have left on this earth. The bottom line as with life itself is that we all have a choice. For me what works is modern medicine with alternative medicine. Again what works for you may not work for me but shouldn't we know about all of our options.

togglea2 I would love to have a list of what you are taking, and what has worked for you.

This site should be for us to share all of our experience and hopes not just the traditional ones.

I hope to meet some of you as we travel this journey together.

Michelle

We are not human beings on a spiritual journey, we are spiritual beings on a human journey……….

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• By gpawelski
• Posted November 13, 2008 at 1:10 pm
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What does it take to support reimbursement for a cancer therapy? Typically the medical oncologist has to produce one or two papers showing that yes, drug A + drug B, has been used in the particular type of cancer.

In oncology literature, there is rarely a situation in which there is only one form of therapy which has proven effective for any first-line treatment. The NCI publishes on its "state-of-the-art" website, you can find multiple different forms of therapy.

So you could flip a coin and be equally well off or equally supported by the literature in choosing therapy. This "flipping a coin" is probably what makes so many oncologists so adverse to having chemotherapy themselves.

So you have a choice of drugs and medical oncoloigsts are having trouble making their mortage payments, much less saving up for retirement (or the lastest beemer). You don't think that the spread between the average wholesale cost and what they get reimbursed is going to enter into their decisionmaking?

Reimbursement level is 120% (1.2 times) the average selling price, except, if the medical oncologist documents that he/she actually had to pay more than the official reimbursement rate, he/she will then be reimbursed for his/her actual cost.

In addition, the medical oncologist will be reimbursed for all bad debt, including uncollectible deductibles and co-pays. He/she will be reimbursed for associated drug administration services, chemotherapy support services, physician "supervision" time, and so forth.

Thus, the medical oncologists remain incentivized to treat, rather than counsel, and they are incentivized to treat with certain "deal of the month" drugs.

It is illegal for physicians to refer patients for laboratory studies at centers in which they hold a financial interest. This is a sensible regulation against self-referral for perhaps unnecessary services which remunerate the referring physician, who then becomes the providing physician.

Maybe it just has to be this way. An ideal way would be if patients received chemotherapy at some treatment center which wasn't involved in the decision to treat or not to treat and in which the medical oncologist didn't have a financial interest. But it may not be feasible to set up the necessary treatment centers.

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• By hermanade
• Posted November 13, 2008 at 2:13 pm
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I think it important and responsible to mention that many of the alternative medicine therapies invoke herbs, which have been liver and kidney toxic to the extent that one has died from liver failure and/or needed a kidney transplant. The FDA doesn't regulate herbs and tinctures and the like, so it really is a free-for-all.

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• By Ray
• Posted November 13, 2008 at 2:19 pm
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I don't think common sense works with cancer. Someone tells you have advanced xxx and you only have a 4% chance of living and your choices are xxxx and your brain fogs over and you never register exactly what they said. Even worse, the someone doing the telling is NOT A FORTUNE teller, but a Medical oncologist wearing a white lab coat. Common sense flys out the window.

The trust issue depends on your relationship with the oncologist. Our oncologist encouraged the idea of surgery, the surgeon wanted us to get radiation, and the radiation doctor felt we needed more chemotherapy. So which doctor to believe? Where is the trust?

The immune system thing DOES NOT MAKE SENSE. Cancer is your own cells run-amuck. How is your immune system supposed to know which cells are good cells and which are cancerous? Sometimes even pathologists looking under a microscope have trouble discerning between the two. What doctors have observed is the immune system of many cancer patients is slightly impaired prior to treatment. So they guess that this might be a cancer prerequisite. But they don't really know.

Cancer feeds on sugar because they are anaerobic..-no, wrong answer. Cancer cells use sugar because cell division is the most intense metabolic activity the body goes through. Only the PET use the radio-isotope glucose. Not the CT scan. Even then, they tell you to lie still because any muscular activity can compete with cancer cells for that sugar.

FATE

Certain things are just about fate. So I think you have just been very fortunate. You have been blessed with a slow growing cancer. Our oncologist said SCLC is fast growing and aggressive, but since she had NSCLC-Adenocarcinoma, it is slow growing so we have time. But her cancer was VERY fast and very aggressive. No one could have predicted that.

We did get an alternative medicine doctor. He spoke the truth above all the others. He said, "All of these treatments will help, but just a little. Your cancer is both advanced and aggressive so this treatment can not work by itself. You need to keep taking chemotherapy (he was referring to Tarceva)."

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• By texaszan
• Posted November 13, 2008 at 5:49 pm
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Don't get me wrong, folks. I think my brother did the right thing by choosing the Gerson system of treatment. It's an alternative, extremely difficult dietary approach but it has had some success with incurable cancer. My brother had no option. He had advanced colon cancer at a young age and wanted to live. What could he do? He could do chemo which they had already told him wouldn't work or he could try for the brass ring by doing something alternative. He tried for the ring and lost, but he would have lost anyway. He was healthy when he died because the diet had cured his high blood pressure and made his liver function at a high level even though it had been invaded by cancer, but as Ray said, cancer is your own cells not foreign cells. It's your own cells which have been switched on and won't stop duplicating. My brother couldn't control the cancer with diet or anything else. It was an unstoppable mistake that happened to at his DNA level. Perhaps others have better luck with alternatives and there is no reason not to post them and share their experience. I hope more of you do. I'm anxious to hear of your success, but please don't try to tell me it's all about money because all of our health care workers have been angels and are underpaid and overworked. Maybe it is just money for the drug companies, I'm sure it is, in fact, but not for the doctors and nurses who have to fight this disease day in and day out and do so with compassion. We appreciate them and without them my husband would be near death now and would certainly be in horrible, horrible pain. The radiation shrunk his tumor enough to get it off the nerves and give him some relief. Next month he'll have surgery and they'll cut the tumor out and throw it away. I'm very impressed with medical science, but I respect anyone who wants to do a more natural approach. We are all trying to do the same thing, cure cancer. Good luck to all of us.

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• By Al1197
• Posted November 14, 2008 at 9:43 am
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I was frustrated and depressed when I learned that cancer treatment was an art and not a science. There is no cure and the treatment is hit or miss. It feels like the Docs are using cocktails rather than waving feathers over her. Alternative meds might work just as well; who knows, certainly not the Docs. When Congress eliminated the need for double-blind testing of alternative meds we lost the opportunity to know for sure what works. And the pharmaceutical cos are in it for the buck and their solutions don't work too well. Hopefully, the DNA research will come up with a cure in the near future so my kids will have the benefit of life without cancer.
Till then, I can only hope & pray that the cocktail she's getting will work. She's started some alternative therapies which I hope will also help.
Have a nice day, Al

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• By Ramona
• Posted November 16, 2008 at 12:14 pm
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A doctor told me decades ago that medicine in general is an art form. Cancer treatment wouldn't be any different. Unfortunately there are no majic bullets. But there are arrows in the quiver.
I have used modern medicine in the form of cutting, burning & poison because I am afraid not to. I think there is gotta be a better way and want to live long enough to avail myself of it should that be needed for me. Meanwhile, alternative has greatly helped me to tolerate the burning, cutting & poison and hopefully enhanced them as well.
I have so far had no symtoms from my dx, only from the assorted "treatments." I do not share much of what I do alternatively with my docs because mostly they are not interested. Some are even hostile to the concept. I do tell them about the acupunture and with the acception of my radiation onc none seemed to be at all interested in even that.
My medical onc told me to take a good multivitamin (I am so beyond that). My surgeon found me swigging from a bottle of stuff and said he would drink the blue stuff too if he had what I have. The surgeon copied the title & author of my so faqr favorite book: Natural Statagies for Cancer Patients by Blaylock, M.D. which truly surprised me.

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