Chemotherapy is NOT healing cancer
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Artista, exactly!
"There is no cure for bc. We just hope it has gone away and doesn't come back. Cure implies no worries on it coming back, imo."
However, the later it comes back, the better it is, IMO.
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Gracie, I think many people, if not most perhaps, have a bit of magical thinking going on when it comes to medicine. We get sick. Those of us who are not doctors or scientists will have a limited understanding of our disease, at least at first. We want to believe that the doctors, regular or alternative ones, can fix us. Although we do know better intellectually, we tend to think of every treatment as a cure or at least something that will "make us better."
Thing is, chemo is not like that. It can help, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. At least my onc has always been completely upfront about response rates and expected efficacy. Also, outside the US, the whole kickback thing with chemo is not an issue and doctors prescribe chemo anyway. In breast cancer, the treatment with the highest rate of return in terms of keeping the cancer gone is surgery. Rads, chemo and pills are extras that may add years to recurrence-free survival. However, they are neither appropriate nor effective for all patients.
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Meow, I had a large, palpable tumor, estimated to be about 5CM. After two FEC treatments, it was half that size. After 4 treatments, we could no longer feel it. There was still live cancer found at surgery. The tumor was 2 by 12 millimeters on the path report. If you think of it in terms of volume, that is a drastic reduction. The chemo most likely also killed micro-mets elsewhere in my body, thus preventing metastasis from developing, at least for a good long while.
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Momine, I agree with your take on chemo and that there is no magical cure or grand pharma conspiracy (a lot of mediocre docs tho.) And my point isn't about a specific doctor recommending it; if you have a cancer that chemo works on, it will be prescribed. S/he is not a researcher, but an oncologist. On the cellular level, it is so many different diseases that an umbrella "cure for cancer" is not feasible, nor is immortality--we all die of something. People reading boards like this one are usually pretty aware of the various subsets of breast cancer types, what they portend, and the typical protocols prescribed. Some people are "cured" for all practical purposes, and cases such as yours prove the point that chemo can beat back cancer for years and sometimes for good. My main point was that good info on the various chemotherapies and efficacy is not always easily accessible to patients (who want it), and that so many research dollars are focused on a platform that has had limited success and for some, very serious and long-term side effects.
Fallleaves's post concerning the effects of some chemos on metastasis was very sobering; we know so little about the endpoint of this stuff. I remain confused about "cancer stem cells" which seem to be accepted as fact in some of the PubMed papers I have read, and described as theoretical by others. Proponents of stem cell theory indicate that the great bulk of malignant tumor cells while "cancerous" are not stem cells, and are unable to cause metastasis independently, only in concert with stem cells. For many, chemo debulks the tumor (sometimes to the point of pCR), but stem cells, according to this theory, are capable of mutating around the chemo leading to resistance and the treatment go round of multiple chemo regimens that stage IV patients often experience. When we do neoadjuvant therapy, and collapse the tumor, are we releasing more of these stem cells than would be the case with surgical resection followed by adjuvant chemo? Surgical resection is sometimes impossible without neo chemo due to tumor size/position/spread, and in that case it is the only way to go, but neo is now also recommended for some tumors which are operable without it, especially HER2+ cancers.
Early stagers are told that adjuvant chemo will mop up any stray cancer cells, but if it doesn't actually kill the cells that cause metastasis, what is the benefit? Hopefully a delay of eventual metastasis since perhaps there is a value in killing the non-stem cancer cells and keeping the cancer load down? Is that benefit worth the immune system impairment of the treatment itself? The stem cell paradigm may not be applicable to all cancer subtypes which adds another layer of complexity, but to have these basic questions unanswered makes treatment decisions very difficult.
I share Falleaves's skepticism about the information we get from both traditional and alternative medicine proponents, disappointment that non-chemo treatments are such a small part of the research pie and that profitability is the main determinant of what will get researched (in the US, anyway.) We need to be able to have civilized conversations on chemotherapy, as I think we have had here; too often these threads collapse into a "you're doing it wrong" abyss. If my daughter winds up with this disease, I want her to have better choices. I hope that some types of breast cancer will be curable, particularly for young patients, and others more effectively and humanely managed.
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we need options and better treatment. Too many people are dying from this disease. Standard conventional care is not good enough.
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I believe cancer can be cured....big pharma has taught us it can't to maintain their history of not 'healing'....just masking symptoms. There's too many people around living healthy lives...thriving, after being sent home to die. I'm one of them.
I believe that chemo can't touch cancer stem cells. Tumors shrink, yes, because chemo can kill non stem cell cancer cells. But that's just my opinion, based on research I've done.
How often do we actually die from the cancer itself?
The strength of our immune system is vitally key to our ability to beat this disease....ANY disease. We need to look at the environment we live in, the water we drink, the personal care products we use on our bodies. The food we feed ourselves, the amount of sugar in our diets, and our mental and emotional health....how much stress do we have to deal with day in and day out. ALL of these things, if out of balance, can contribute to cancer growth in our bodies. All of these things, in our lives, are controlled by industries that are concerned with profit only.
HOW DARE cosmetic companies run 'pink ribbon' campaigns, when they STILL use proven carcinogenic ingredients in their products. HOW DARE the FDA allow 'fragrance' as a 'ingredient' in all of the products we use on our skin, in our households, and KNOW this category is full of hundreds of known carcinogenic ingredients that are totally unregulated.
I know my cancer was a product of the fear that had lived in my heart for decades. After my stage 4 diagnosis, I realized I was backed into such a corner, that I HAD to deal with it....face up to it. I eventually realized my cancer existed BECAUSE of this fear. Once I faced up to it and moved beyond that fear, the cancer stopped manifesting. None of my doctors can explain it. NOT ONE.
Except now, I'm FURIOUS at the big pharma industry.....FURIOUS about the things I've learned about how Auschwitz was a testing ground for many of Rockefeller's 'coal tar-based drugs'....CHEMO drugs, just so he could earn money on a by-product of his oil, that, until that point, didn't have any purpose whatsoever, and was going to cost him a lot of money to dispose of...there was SO MUCH of it. Now we live in a society that is a result of a business plan that began in the early 20th century, and today, holds our health hostage, in the name of profit. A system so greedy, and so far reaching, it infiltrated all the teaching hospitals and universities in the mid 20th century, in order to ENSURE petroleum based pharmaceutical drugs became the norm. That clinical trials, and test studies can be manipulated and faked so very easily, in order to put a product on the market. That the very doctors we need to trust and believe in, are trained in using these pharmaceutical drugs only...we literally put our LIVES into their hands. THIS is what our medicine has been reduced to today. How many doctors watch their patients die, year after year, and then finally wake up to the fact that they are LEGALLY bound to ONLY offer cutting, burning or poisoning as potential treatment options. It must kill something inside them....and it makes me sick. Sick. Sick.
I'm not a radical. I'm just more educated today than I was when I began this journey. I myself was ravaged by chemo, and wrote a very long blog called 'diary of a bilateral mastectomy'....trying to help others navigate the journey with a bit more information than I had had.
I refused to be a victim of this disease. Yes, it might kill me, but that wasn't the point. I wanted to die on my terms....I wanted to take care of my SELF, reaffirm my connection to God, to the living and loving energy surrounding me all the time. In some ways, it was a blessing knowing 'when' approximately I was going to die. My moments became everything, and I decorated my heart with each and every one of them. I had never been so alive, as when I KNEW I was dying. I had to find the BALANCE within myself, because the knowledge that I was dying colored my waking hours. It was the first thing that flooded my awareness when I woke up....the pain of the disease would hit me in the next heartbeat. It had become a painful journey, as the metastasis was focused in my sternum, which I soon discovered was connected to every single physical process my body went through....breathing, sitting, standing, laying down, etc. etc. etc. I knew I would eventually need to rely on opiates for pain relief, but they would also dull everything else in my life...my body functions, my lucidity, my moments.
And so my ideas, my beliefs are a result of that journey. Big pharma has almost everyone believing it's half lies and half truths, one of which is that cancer can't be cured.
Not one of us has been spared a story of someone whose last years/months were fraught with such pain and suffering, caused by the poisons they were giving in an attempt to gain more time. Healing our bodies with poison?? How come that doesn't make every person with a cancer diagnosis wary enough to at least look into alternative methods before succumbing to this barbarism?
If we see the actual statistics of how effective chemo is.....it's abysmal. Viewing chemo through the light of common sense, would anyone truly want to put their lives in the hands of a family of drugs PROVEN to be responsible for a mere 1.5% of breast cancer patients living longer than 5 years? And why do we let mainstream medicine get away with this five year crap?? If we demanded more treatment options for the dollars WE earn, for the dollars WE have freedom to spend as we wish, do you think big pharma would be able to maintain such a stranglehold on our healthcare system if we all started voting with our dollars? If we STOP believing that mammograms are an 'early' form of detection?? STOP believing that chemo can affect anything more than non stem cell cancer cells??
Places like this are the only place we can go to share our journey with other's who are also afflicted with this disease. Yet, this place is a showcase for big pharma's treatments only....and the 'other side of the coin' is relegated to the 'alternative' section....with a warning to people that the information here is not recommended or endorsed in any way. Why not?
If we're not given the other side of the coin as a practical choice by our health care practitioners who should be taught all about those choices.....then are we being given a choice at all??? Why are we expected to submit to the profit machine, and leave our lives in the hands of a drug that can only claim a success rater of 1.5%? (this doesn't mean only 1.5% of cancer patients live longer than 5 years, it means chemo is only responsible for 1.5% of survivors who DO live longer than 5 years). It would be interesting to KNOW the percentage of chemo/radiation patients who are left with a list of horrible side effects that they have to live with for the rest of their lives.
Swallowing Draino is less poisonous than taking chemo....yet, how many people reading this would recoil in horror if their doctor said they needed to swallow draino to get rid of a cyst in their intestines? Yet we let them feed chemo into our veins, thinking.....yes, THIS will surely kill that cancer, THIS may give me more time. Why do we believe this?? Statistics show it's only true in 1.5% of the time.
Why does big pharma suppress everything 'alternative'? Can't it's treatment methodologies stand up to scrutiny, or to alternative forms of therapy?
Many of us believe that a plant needs to be tested in a lab every which way from Sunday to ensure it's safe for us to take.....even though its existed in materia medica for (potentially) centuries. But, the plant is natural....how can we regulate growing this plant? How do we trust that this plant is part of the ingredients listed on the bottle? Big pharma is responsible for not allowing those answers into the light of day.
Chemo is one of the most deadly poisons known to humankind....and we let them pour it into our veins....it just doesn't make sense to me.
Example; How many people in here understand how healing coffee enemas are?? That ONE coffee enema raises our glutathione levels 600 - 700%? That glutathione is the MOST POWERFUL ANTIOXIDANT our body produces?? That coffee enemas are like dialysis for our blood. Coffee enemas were part of the Merck Manual until the 70's, and only removed to make more room for pharmaceutically-related information....so why isn't your doctor recommending them to all their cancer patients?? Coffee enemas would take the toxic load off your liver that the chemo imposes. SO WHY DOESN'T YOUR DOCTOR KNOW ABOUT COFFEE ENEMAS?? It's not 'alternative' ....it's science. but, it's not taught in the universities....because it's an effective remedy that the pharmaceutical industry can't profit from. It's not a petroleum based pharmaceutical drug. If it were you can bet your doctor would have been trained in its use....as long as it ultimately represented profit.
I could go on and on and on and on. Yet, so few people are interested in hearing the other side of the coin. So few question using poison to heal. So few....it breaks my heart.
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Momine, there is evidence-based research that shows cancer stem cells are not killed by chemo. Tumors shrink with chemo because most of the tumor is comprised of non-stem cell cancer cells. But the stem cells, the only cells that can cause metastasis, are left to move as they will in a body ravaged by the chemo poisons and toxicity.
Therefore, it could be argued that chemo is merely throwing gasoline on the fire of cancer in our bodies.
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Twinkly, coffee enemas were suggested in the Merck manual IF a regular enema didn't do the trick. The other "step up" suggested in the Merck manual was to add whiskey to the enema, if results were not produced with a regular one. The coffee was simply supposed to make the enema more effective as an enema.
My husband died of cancer a month ago. The cancer invaded all his internal organs, including his intestine and also his bones. The bone mets caused hyper-calcemia that gave him a couple of strokes. Then his one remaining kidney shut down, and he had already been unable to eat for weeks, because his intestine was blocked by cancer. He was a spiritual person and someone who was happy every day he woke up and saw the sun. He also loved laughing over dirty limericks, of which he knew tons and he loved his work.
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Momine,
Sorry to hear about the passing of your hubby.
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Good morning All,
Not quite time for my weekly allotment, I'll probably be nice.
Gracie, I appreciate your post and am very thankful that there's room for all opinions here, offered civilly. My opinion is often contrary, but I do see the good in other people's choices.
My non-chemo heart may have to change soon as the new PARP inhibitors come along and are administered in conjunction with traditional chemo. So even though I'm anti-chemo, I believe PARP inhibitors may work on my cancer and will have to suffer the chemo to get them to work.
Though I have a very firm, long held belief, I try to remain open minded, in case something that I think might work comes along. My next appt. with the MO is in October. I'll prepare some info to discuss with her about it. I may be bald yet!
Momine, My heart is with you this morning and I'm so sorry for the loss of your beloved husband.
I hope you all have a peaceful day,
cb
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Momine, I'm so sorry about your husband's passing. I realized when you posted recently that I hadn't seen you here for awhile, and now I understand why. I'm so sorry. You have my deepest condolences. Thank you for sharing a couple of things about him. I can only imagine how difficult this must be for you. Deanna
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Momine, I am so very sorry for the loss of your dear husband. He sounds like an amazing man. You were fortunate to have had each other.
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Momine, so sorry for your loss; what a sweetheart he must have been.
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I started taking daily coffee enemas because my liver was hurting, and the only thing that helped was the medical marijuana, but.....the medical marijuana was starting to make me dizzy (so after taking for 2 years solid, I quit, with not one side effect)......so, after watching 'The Quest for the Cure' series on youtube, I learned about coffee enemas. I was drawn to the information by my intuitive understanding of how it worked, in my body, physiologically.
During the first 2 weeks, I passed over 125 liver stones (they were greenish, putty like lumps....and in the beginning they were rather large, the size of bath beads, if anyone remembers those....then gradually, over the next 2 weeks, they became smaller and smaller, and all in all, during that first month, I passed well over 200 of these lumps). My liver stopped hurting by the third week, (it had been hurting for over 2 years at that point) and this pain has now disappeared from my life.
You prepare 4 cups of special enema coffee. Then use 2 cups of this prepared coffee, hold inside for 15 minutes, and then have a second session with another 2 cups of prepared coffee, also holding for 15 minutes. You need special coffee that is pure and organic. I use the coffee available through SA Wilsons. This is enema coffee only....very high in palmitic acid and caffeine. It's the palmitic acid and caffeine that are drawn up through the portal vein (leading from the sigmoid part of the colon directly to the liver) that stimulates the liver to produce more glutathione.....and the way you FEEL, after doing a coffee enema, is testimony itself. SA Wilsons have a great BPA free enema bucket kit, which is perfect to use for your enema.
Cancer patients that have been sent away to die, are the ones that ultimately ended up at the Gerson clinic, so very sick and with no hope. They were given up to 6 coffee enemas per day, to manage the toxic overload in their livers. They were also fed a diet of very concentrated foods, such as vegetable juices, in order to kick start their immune systems and give their bodies the nutrition they needed to fight the disease and heal.
By citing the Merck manual, I was hoping to show everyone that coffee enemas have been a part of the physicians 'bible' but physicians aren't recommending something as safe and simple as a coffee enema, because they're not taught about them in medical school. Why? Because they are only taught how to prescribe pharmaceutical drugs. To profit big pharma, who has hijacked the medical system to create a model where they earn billions of dollars on providing us with drugs that only mask symptoms, and aren't designed to heal. To heal would mean profits would diminish.
Coffee enemas are amazing, and everyone here, and even those people who don't have cancer, can benefit from them. Everyone.
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Twinkly,
I agree with you on so many points. I agree about the ineffectiveness of chemo and the profit mongering of big pharma. And we both know how frustrating it can be to try to discuss this when someone invariably comes along to tell us they're cancer free today because of chemo or how chemo saved someone they know.
I like to think we all search out alternative methods of dealing with this disease. I've looked at both natural and scientific (for lack of a better word, pardon my lack of vocabulary) remedies. I'm currently leaning toward a scientific find that may remedy my situation. I would embrace it equally if it were a naturally occurring, plant based cure, but it's not, it's chemo science from big pharma.
So we can't throw the baby out with the bathwater. I think I can safely say that no one likes chemo, they endure it with hope. The day I think chemotherapy has evolved enough to effectively treat my cancer, I'll have some. Until then, I'm not buying it and they can't give it to me because they went to medical school and "said so."
The medical Standard of Care needs to be readdressed. People need to know how ineffective chemo is and need to be offered an option by those MOs. I tell you what, it was no fun being labeled "non-compliant" because I chose not to have chemo. It hurt me deeply. I still have a hard time trying to embrace that rebel in me - but the alternative, to me anyway, was just too frightening to bear. It shouldn't be. Doctors should not be forced to offer chemo as the standard and call everyone else non-compliant to cover their butts from being sued. Standard of Care vs Malpractice, two sides of a health care coin. There should be another option.
Twinkly, If you find anything out there in the world of alternative healing that will work on my damaged DNA, PLEASE pm me. Meanwhile, I'm stuck with medical science and they haven't quite figured it out yet.
It's hard to be patient when faced with so many who have to believe the chemo works but it's not our place to dash someone's hope. We can only continue to seek out a better alternative and hope it comes in time.
It looks like you had chemo at one point in your treatments and it's 8 years later. My prognosis is currently 5 years. Maybe you're one of the lucky 1.5% that chemo worked for? Maybe it's lengthened your life? Maybe I should try it and get and extra 3 years? Not, but you can see how chemo enables hope.
In the same vein, I have an Advance Health Care Directive. If I can't speak for myself, I don't want a lot of doctors practicing the Standard of Care on me, whatever it might be.
Best wishes,
cb
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Dear cb,
Thank you for your post. I sometimes feel very alone here.
It's quite a slog trying to shine a light on the 'other side of the coin', and it's so wrong that the intensely personal choices we make are validated ONLY when we choose chemo and radiation to treat our cancer. There IS another side to the coin, and our doctors should be sharing natural ways of dealing with our disease, with our illnesses, as an alternative to petroleum based pharmaceutical drugs, but unfortunately, they receive no training in these areas.
'Non Compliance' is a horrible label. I remember refusing my last four rounds of chemo, and having to justify my decision to every nurse and doctor that I had anything to do with. It was an arrogance based on fear, I think. Doctors in the cancer business make a lot of money, but they don't have the satisfaction of watching their patients improve, and ultimately going home to live happy, healthy and productive lives. So many of their patients die.
Chemo didn't work for me when I had it back in 2008. At the end of 2013, I was diagnosed with metastatic cancer to the sternum, the T1 vertebrae and a few other areas of concern. I was given approximately 2 1/2 years to live. It was only at that point that I turned my back on the standard care of medicine. You see, I had nothing left to lose. I was told I was going to die. They would help manage my pain with opiates and further radiation, but they would need to carefully calculate how much further radiation I could take, because radiation lives in us for the remainder of our lives, and we can only be exposed to 'so much' before it kills us. Again, the mentality of managing pain and symptoms with poison....it just makes no common sense at all.
Getting healthy again has been a slow journey. I look back and see my energy returning so incrementally. It would take 3 to 4 months to gain another hours worth of energy during the day. To not have to sleep a full 12 hours every night.
And today, I'm still healing. I'm still getting back to good. If I'm too active in the day, I'm completely exhausted for the next day or two. If I eat sugar in any way, shape or form, my sternum hurts. Like I said earlier, everyone who has cancer also has a candida overgrowth....so I've worked at kicking sugar completely. Doctors know this about sugar...yet volunteers in the chemo unit in my hospital wander around serving fruit juice and cookies, coffee and tea to patients waiting for their chemotherapy.
Stay strong cb. This above all; to thine own self be true.
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Twinkly, LOL on the sugary snacks in the hospital. I had the same reaction. I am glad your liver stopped hurting. That is great.
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ALL: Thanks for the condolences and good thoughts.
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cb
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Momine, I'm terribly sorry about your husband's passing away. My condolences to you and your family. You must have been going through one heck of a tough time. My dad died two weeks ago so we were in this rut together somehow.
Twinkly, I agree with you about the non-compliance label. That sounds awful. I also believe your doctors did you a great disservice telling you you had just so much time to live. People have been known to die on schedule with such an "authoritative" forewarning. My doctors told me I could live for many years. So far they have not been wrong. Next month will be 9 years since my diagnosis of Stage IV. I can't say how much chemo helped to extend my life but, like Momine, my tumors shrank and disappeared during treatment. Stem cells may still be hiding out but I'm grateful they've decided to be quiet for so long, if so.
I am not against coffee enemas and much less against the addition of alcohol, but if I were to have them, I would definitely only do it under medical supervision. There is the risk of puncturing delicate tissues. I agree with your calculation of how long it takes to regain energy. It took me about two years.
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Hi Heidihill,
When you do the coffee enema, you only allow two cups of coffee inside at a time, which is easily managed. The tip of the enema hose is about 1/3 the circumference of your baby finger, and you only place it inside about 1/2 to 1 inch. I don't think there is any danger of doing damage to delicate tissue...the sphincter is wide, and banded with strong muscles. The enema hose is pliable and has two holes for the fluid to exit...one in the tip and one in the side. I've administered a coffee enema every day for months now, and my health and little health issues I had just come to accept have been improving and improving. I would hate to think that anyone would not take this therapy due to lack of confidence in their ability to place the hose, or anything like that...its very simple and easy to manage, no matter how little experience you've had.
This therapy is so helpful for all of us who have had to process these poisons in our blood through our livers, that I don't understand why we aren't 'told' by our doctors to give ourselves these enemas daily, as the most safe thing we can do for ourselves, to help our livers process the chemicals out of our blood stream.....to assist our livers with effectively managing the other 500+ processes in our body it's responsible for.....to increase the glutathione levels to such enormous degrees that our blood is thoroughly cleansed and our immune systems fortified.
I wouldn't add alcohol in my enema, I've read nothing that indicates this would be efficacious. Alcohol is meant to polish metals, and I don't voluntarily put it into my body in any way if I can help it. I have been thinking of making frankincense suppositories....similar to the medical marijuana suppositories I took for so long. But I will start adding these new natural therapies if and when my body starts to need further help.
I've been 'healing for 1 1/2 years now, but really have only started feeling better since the stones left my liver, and my liver stopped hurting. This was just over 4 months ago. It means a great deal to me to no longer have pain in my liver. I was sure, deep down in my heart, that the cancer would manifest there next, but I didn't know why, until all of those stones that blocked the biliary ducts in my liver were released. But now, with these daily coffee enemas, I 'feel' healthy in my liver, and that somehow, the choice to do these coffee enemas has been instrumental in my liver staying healthy and not succumbing to it's inability to do it's job, cleaning my blood, as well as the other 500+ processes it is responsible for in my body. My biliary ducts were so plugged with these liver stones (lumps), I can't understand how I even started to get healthy in the first place.
It's hard to explain how deep of a conviction this is in me, knowing I've potentially avoided succumbing to liver cancer because of these enemas, and knowing how much I've helped my entire body get on track to really healing...that my quality of life has improved significantly because of these enemas. I'm sure everyone here knows how to listen to their bodies, as this is something we learn whether we want to or not, while on this journey. So I encourage everyone to try a coffee enema at least once....so you experience for yourself the healthy singing I felt in my liver just hours after taking my first enema.
I've written instructions for doing the enema for many friends of mine who don't have cancer, but have issues with poor liver functionality. They all have told me they are amazed at the positive experience they've had, and we now collectively order ten pounds of coffee at a time, as we continue with this safe and effective treatment. I'm happy to share these instructions with anyone who would like.....just pm me.
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I apologize if I'm reposting Amy Berman's story here. She refused chemotherapy and aggressive treatments for Stage IV inflammatory breast cancer and is relying on hormonal therapy. When her bone mets became painful, she chose to have one radiation treatment, rather than the usual 10 to 20 treatments. She's survived and lived well for over five years since her original diagnosis. A remarkable woman!
Healing regards, Stephanie
xxx
Here's an excerpt and link to the Washington Post story - A nurse with fatal breast cancer says end-of-life discussions saved her life
News reports say you will soon make a final decision about paying doctors and other providers who talk to their patients about end-of-life planning, I have a fatal form of breast cancer, and I'd like to tell you how such conversations have allowed me to survive, and live well, in the five years since my diagnosis.
I am a nurse, a nationally recognized expert in care of the aged and senior program officer at the John A. Hartford Foundation, which is devoted to improving the care of older people in the United States. Yet my perspective is not simply professional. For, you see, I live with Stage 4 (end-stage) inflammatory breast cancer. And while this metastatic cancer will one day kill me, the advanced-care planning conversations I have had with my health-care team have been lifesaving since my diagnosis.
I use the word "lifesaving" advisedly because that is what these conversations are truly about. When done well, they can shape care in ways that give people with serious illness a chance at getting the best life possible.
This kind of conversation initially helped my care team understand what was important to me and helped clarify my goals of care. Faced with an incurable disease and a prognosis where only 11 to 20 percent survive to five years and there is no statistic for 10-year survival because it so rarely happens, I came to understand that my priority was to seek a "Niagara Falls trajectory" — to feel as well as possible for as long as possible, until I quickly go over the precipice. Quality of life is more important to me than quantity of days, if they are miserable days.
Following a discussion with my oncologist (a conversation that would be reimbursed if you in fact move ahead and change your rules), we initially decided on a palliative regime to slow the cancer's spread with the least amount of burdensome side effects. We would not impose the most difficult curative treatments on an incurable disease.
This treatment has included a pill I take each evening to hold back the hormones that fuel my cancer, coupled with a monthly infusion to keep my bones strong. I don't take most difficult treatments, the typical noxious cocktail of two chemotherapy drugs that 90 percent of people with inflammatory breast cancer receive, coupled with surgery to remove my breast, followed by weeks of radiation and more debilitating chemotherapy.
When I suggested a second opinion after I was diagnosed, my oncologist blessed it. Sadly, when I sat down with this esteemed expert, he didn't ask about my goals or wishes. Instead, he suggested an aggressive, hail-Mary treatment regime — including rounds of chemotherapy, a mastectomy and radiation — that would have compromised the quality of my remaining life without any real benefit. There was no conversation. He was expert in everything but what really mattered to me. I thanked him for his time, and left.
I am pleased to report that the subsequent nearly five years have rewarded my decision to seek palliative rather than more aggressive treatment. The cancer has spread a bit farther from my spine and into a couple of my ribs. But because my treatment focuses on helping me live well and feel well, I haven't been in the hospital. I feel great. My pain has been minimal so far — with one exception.
Six months ago, the cancer spread to a new spot, my fourth and fifth ribs. It was painful. The standard treatment is 10 to 20 doses of radiation to get rid of the pain. My palliative care provider, an expert in fostering discussions about goals of care, said that a recent recommendation of the Choosing Wisely Campaign, which promotes patient-physician conversations about unnecessary medical tests and procedures, suggested that I could get rid of the pain with a single, larger dose of radiation. It worked like a charm. I felt better, avoided the terrible side effects of repeated radiation, got immediate relief and avoided paying for all the unnecessary doses of radiation.
I estimate I've saved about a million dollars by avoiding care I do not want, which includes the cost of chemotherapy, radiation, surgery to remove the breast, at least one hospitalization for that care, and the follow-up care to the surgery. Chemotherapy alone would have cost upward of $500,000. Insurance would have covered much of this, but not all.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-sci...
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Thank you Stephanie.
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Twinkly,
Have you tried occasionally fasting? I hear that it not only allows for toxins to leave but forces things to rejuvenate. I think if my cancer was not genetic, I would try more internal body cleansing. I believe that you are what you eat and that some of this cancer is unnecessarily brought on by what people have consumed or been environmentally subjected to.
cb
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kayb, if chemo bought your friend 6 good years, I'd take that in a New York minute!
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Momine, I am so very sorry about the passing of your husband, and for what he went through. He sounded like a wonderful man.
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I hope so too, kay!
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Well, of course I went right to my bookshelf and pulled out my 1950 Merck Manual (Eighth Edition). Coffee enemas are listed under bedside procedures, specifically under, "Retention enemas."
Merck says, "6 to 8 oz. coffee, or 1 oz. whiskey added to 6 oz. isotonic saline, may be given for their stimulating effect."
As far as I can understand, their intent was that this caffeine or booze should temporarily restore energy, not produce any curative effect. I did check several of their neoplasm sections, but found no additional mention. Of course, the medical world of 1969 is worlds away from 1950. Anyone have access to a 1960's edition?
Momine, I am so very sorry to hear of your husband's death.
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Genetic failures and misinformation are a different story as I understand. The studies seem to indicate some people simply have faulty signal systems that would overwhelm the best immune system.
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I'm happy you're reading the Merck manual, but Gerson perfected the coffee enema for detoxification. Primarily, he worked with cancer patients who were sent home to die. Wouldn't my own story carry more weight than what you read in the Merck manual? We have allowed the most toxic poison known to humankind into our veins....and actually believe poisoning ourselves will potentially buy us more years on this earth....yet we question to the 'nth' degree natural and safe remedies? What kind of mindset is that??
I ask that because I really want to know....what kind of mindset welcomes toxic poison, but questions natural and safe ways we can help ourselves get through the ravages of this disease....not only on our bodies, but on our emotions, our thoughts and our spiritual well being?
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