As a closing to this section as a prospective patient, I know that I have learnt much.
I did it without a potential cancer diagnosis though.
I could trawl the net and get interested in side issues.
I also have spent all my adult life dispensing health care when there is ‘no hope’, so I am not the average potential patient.
It must be absolute horror to have to change as much as one may need to when confronted with cancer and the whole idea of personal responsibility and making choices.
This is where we may need to – go outside what was comfortable!!
Coming out the other end of the cancer therapy machine may be scarier than entering it – as what next?
At the beginning of the cancer journey as a standard patient, we may have thought the Western Orthodox Medicine (WOM) approach was the answer.
Perhaps it is not a black and white issue?
Especially when we are after wellness, not just an absence of disease.
As life continues on, we may find we have significant other issues that are created through the use of the anti cancer therapies and that are just not addressed well with the standard WOM approaches.
‘A Canadian survey of more than 900 cancer patients is quoted as demonstrated that 94% experienced disease-related symptoms such as fatigue and anxiety that were not addressed by their conventional treatment’.
http://theoncologist.alphamedpress.org/content/11/7/732.full
Complementary and Alternative Medicine During Cancer Treatment: Beyond Innocence, Tascalar, Metin, de Jong, Floris, et al 2006
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/coping/life-after-treatment/page1/AllPages
provides a medialised guide to ‘after care’.
There is still no mention of how to assist the body to go to a pristine condition.
If as a patient I had been visiting a natural therapist for another unrelated ailment or for life enhancement, I would likely return, as they had answers when the others did not. This is addressed in the issues raised by Rob on the unmet needs of patients.
The side effects of standard cancer treatment need work and CAM is most likely to be useful here.
Also to just calm the person so they are able to keep going.
(This I know as I have been at the dispensing end of the equation for over three decades).
Looking to quality of life – after chemo had finished as an example, or whilst the remission was coming to a close – what would I as a patient be looking for then?
I know that after the flurry of medical interest and activity, once the cancer is ‘gone’ there is a vast hole – what next?
No apparent medical interest except the hopeful checks to see if it is (not) back.
With no life changes made in what created it – but with more toxins and terror to be internally processed – I would be personally very worried.
Seeking help for the anxiety would surely have to go further than the anti depressant or sleeping tablets offered and again – here we are where I have found the answer.
Health restoration is outside the scope of practice of WOM and we call anything that would surely be common sense self care is called (relegated the term) CAM.
‘Disease’ focus is the raison d’etre of WOM and the ‘health’ one is to be found in ‘CAM’.
Possibly were I looking for the help here I would look to those who had either had cancer and won, or those who had been intimately acquainted with those who had since died – to see what tricks or learnings they could pass on to me.
‘Research’ then takes on the personal aspect of being human – relating and story telling. Just as you have done.
Where would I find information on how to heal?
I would go to those who have healed, or from those who help others to. How would I be sure I am getting appropriate information?
The very same question can be asked of those oncologists whose medicine has no valid health restoration paradigm. We covered this in the on vitalism.
With no idea how the cancer arrived, why my body did not heal it itself, and whether or not what the oncologists were doing to plunder my inherent strength and constitutional vigour will ultimately kill me due to the extreme toxicity of their ‘healing’ ministrations, I would not necessarily trust their ability to look to my best interests.
This then comes down to the religious zeal with which most have opinions.
Belief is what I am told is what is taking my sister and my friend through their current cancer choices – time will tell.
They believe (could be seen as an opposite of bone pointing) that the oncologists will win for them.
- Is this placebo at work?
- Do we really know that the drugs and radiation actually cure, or just delay (and at great cost to the body) the inevitable?
“The physician’s belief in the treatment and the patient’s faith in the physician exert a mutually reinforcing effect; the result is a powerful remedy that is almost guaranteed to produce an improvement and sometimes a cure.” — Petr Skrabanek and James McCormick, Follies and Fallacies in Medicine, p. 13. Found on http://www.skepdic.com/placebo.html
Ultimately we will, as patients, do what we believe will work.
I suspect that no amount of research will shake us – either before we start on the war against ‘self turned rogue’/cancer, or after.
Should we throw our hat into the WOM approach and it then for whatever and whenever does not live up to our hopes – then the ‘CAM’ options are still there – to look at self and life and what we want.
This is often what happens in actuality – people end up with a therapist such as myself when all other’ hope’ is exhausted.
- I could ask why are we not understanding wellness, and then how to return to perfect physiology?
- Why is this not the focus of WOM?
I suspect the answer is found in the post I wrote last under ‘who is fighting for the patient?’
I am not sure WOM is, so much as fighting a war to get rid of disease.
To not look to how a body heals seems a fundamental flaw in the WOM position.
Trawling the net we can find many different ways to help ourselves.
Some involve more or less effort. http://learninggnm.com/home.html is the work of an oncologist who found himself with cancer and investigated why.
What he discovered was outside the medical norm (the inner landscape, not the outer attack mode).
He, like many others who have totally valid though not marketable and patentable work, has been pilloried.
I suspect it depends whether a person is the type to look outside mainstream as to whether they would find anything not within the disease model credible.
http://www.whale.to/a/last.html is a great thought provoking article.
Many of us who have been at the patient interface when there is nothing left but us – the desperation bucket find that the entirety of the person is often healing though the end is nigh.
(Perhaps see my post about three ‘terminal’ cases form my practice).
What is the real reason for seeking help?
There are many inherent healing factors found within.
Of course there is also prayer and some would go there first and some are spontaneously healed.
Another amazing healing tool is found within us all.
We all make Glutathione – which is routinely injected to counteract trauma and s far more potent than any IV Vit C drip.
This would not be profitable as it is naturally occurring, though is highly effective in practice.
Possibly this is why I have not seen mention of it whilst trawling the net this last week.
I know it to be astonishing in practice!! heck out the Composition Patent Document.
Discovered as an oral supplementation as a Glutathione accelerator by an immunologist/ oncologist and medical researcher – Dr Robert Keller.
When Glutathione is used IV or orally it massively improves all health markers.
With multiple medical research papers on why people do not heal after cancer, I find it fascinating that the Glutathione that used AT LEAST in IV as it can so remarkably heal the body.
It is not used within standard WOM and cancer protocols.
This is explained for me when I realise that they are not involved in health restoration but disease control.
If this understanding is missing as a patient, when you may think ‘they are doing all they can’ – you get to stay within the ‘good patient’ box. Not asking awkward questions.
As a patient I would need to understand that these are not the different sides of a coin, but totally different paradigms.
Whilst healing I would know I needed to change my habits that had created the cancer cells to take off without check. As a patient I would be concerned about
1) – Surviving the treatment – as chemo and radiation are highly toxic and dangerous in themselves.
2) – Actually having changed sufficiently to not recreate the problem.
3) – Having quality and peace in life that I may have needed the cancer to alert me to go to find.
Who can tell us what our own journey is about?
I guess who we are will determine where our own version of research will take us and from there the meanings we give the journey.
References
1) – http://theoncologist.alphamedpress.org/content/11/7/732
2) – http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/coping/life-after-treatment/page1/AllPages
3) – http://www.skepdic.com/placebo.html
4) – http://learninggnm.com/home.html