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My mother has Cervical Cancer. About 5 years ago she had a radical
hysterectomy. About 2 years about they found a tumor during a routine
exam. It was located on the left side of the pelvic area wrapped in
some nerves and around a vein that controls the blood for her left leg.
She had surgery to remove as much as they could, then had chemotherapy
and radiation.
they repeatedly took CAT scans and after a while looked as though they
got it all. They did surgery at IUPUI and removed several lymph nodes
around that area and found that the tumor was like concrete because it
turned in to scar tissue for the radiation. The nodes closest to the
tumor were clean (we assume the radiation killed it) and they ones
farther away had trace amounts, but because they took the entire node
they took out all the cancer.
After some precautionary chemo, she was given a clean bill of health. About six months ago, they found that the tumor was growing again on the
back side. The started her on chemo again. They said her body was too
weak for radiation. and because of the nerves and vein in the tumor they
could not do surgery to remove it. At first the tumor looked like it
was shrinking. But a couple weeks ago they said that it hadn't started
to spread but it had started growing and was twice the size it started
out as and was resisting the chemo. So now they have stopped all
medicine except the pain medicine. They say there is nothing that they
can do for her. We asked about experimental drugs, but her doctor was not hopeful. He
said that the cancer experiments that he knew of were not for her kind.
But he would get in touch with the doctor from IUPUI and let her talk to
him. Do you know of anything else that we can try?
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-Assuming that the doctor does not come up with anything else to try,
this would seem to be one of those cases in which the patient would have
very little to lose by trying some of the methods from alternative medicine
that have a reputation for helping a lot of people. For example, the vegetarian diet used by so many different people to
treat cancer patients -- Hay, Gerson, Kelley, Gonzalez, Frahm, Day, and
on and on -- surely has a good reputation in "alternative medicine"
circles, has not been tried on this patient yet, is safe, doesn't cost
very much (especially since the patient is presumably already eating
SOMETHING) and can be administered without any costly medical help. Sure, it may not make a difference in the outcome. But there are a very
large number of people out there who say they've tried it and it DID help
them, including some very astonishing cases that look to anybody but a
closed-minded skeptic to be very much like a "miracle cure". So, with no guarantees, but just some healthy optimism, WHY NOT TRY IT? If more people WOULD try this kind of thing, instead of being talked out
of it for specious reasons (in a case like this one), and if good data were
kept on all the successes and failures, we'd soon enough have the evidence
needed to stop debating and KNOW whether or not these methods have merit.
And maybe to begin finding out why they work for some and not for others,
if indeed that is the result the data shows.
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