Alternative Treatment

JoyLiesWithin, I am guessing that you do not have an integrative/alternative physician helping you with a strategy to build your body and its defenses to help protect against mets.   I also get the impression that your understanding of alternative cancer therapies is limited and vague.  That's common especially among those who work in the medical field. These individuals often reject alternative medicine without having even tried or researched them.  To clarify, alternative medicine does not mean "no treatment". The techniques that alternative physicians currently use to eradicate cancer and restore health often work impressively well and sometimes surgery is not needed.     

abigail - There is one lady on here who does share her story of what happened to her when she didn't have surgery. Search for posts by Chilipaddi - her story is SO very sad - she got fooled by alternative claims and has suffered terribly. Surgery has to be the No 1 thing any woman diagnosed with breast cancer should do.

there was a thread or a fora people who have used only alternatives.  I havn't seen it for awhile.  I have seen where members are still drinking coffee.

There you go Abigail, a train wreck is what it turned out to be unfortunately - you know you can select your favorite threads, the red button right above the blue box on top "Add to my favorite topics", it's much easier to follow topics that way 

http://community.breastcancer.org/forum/121/topic/765299?page=1 

Zuvart, my interpretation of your post is nowhere near what some are accusing you of, twisting your words, what a nice way to welcome a new member !  As you can see, alternative threads attract many non alternative minded people who just like to hang around and thrash what people post, their idea of quality time (shrug)

Thanks for the heads up on thermography.  My concern is that if I were to get an 'above 150' score let's say, I would be panicking, because my situation right now does not permit me to get extensive alt treatments - so I would be left with the knowledge which I could do nothing about.  I recall my BS demanding a mammogram (I soooo did not want to have a mammogram) before he proceeded to surgery.

Bottom line, surgery and/or conventional treatment can proceed only if a tumour is detectable by the current standard technology, they will not treat otherwise.  That's quite a sobering thought. Scary really.

That's why it is so crucial that effective alternative therapies be integrated in our care and reimbursed by insurance companies.  

Do you think Kaara that an MRI covers the gap ?  I don't know how small a tumour MRIs can detect, am gonna google ...

There are so many horror stories on the Stage 4 thread of those who did conventional..pages and pages.

Zuvart, when you said "There are preventive strategies to prevent cancer metastasis." I guess you meant the integrative therapists which we don't have here in Australia in the same way you do in parts of America.

And no, I didn't take you to mean what Digger said at all.  I don't use an integrative therapist as I did some training in Naturopathy around 35 years ago and saw the biased views, the lack of any real evidence to support their methods, and the lack of an internship like doctors have to do, so their diagnosis could miss potentially fatal and urgent conditions. Many of the students were incredibly biased towards their own favourite modality yet spoke of "holistic" while using the same methods on all their patients.  Back then, fasting was all the rage.  I'm sure there are some excellent integrative therapists out there who can see the bigger picture, but wouldn't have a clue how to find the good ones.  Our laws are different here in Australia. 

I'm familiar with the various modalities as I have continued to read and study widely. I have used a chiropractor (a friend who has moved interstate now) and a TCM practitioner in the past. I also own one of the earlier BIll Henderson books and have followed his newsletters for a decade at least. His main strategy is the Budwig Protocol which I tried for a while.  When I found out the main yahoo group was deleting all negative reports I lost interest. I also have read many of the alternative web sites and find the information varies from good to painfully, mind bendingly bad.  When people use distorted and biased 'facts' to prove their point, I know their information is worthless as I use logic.  I like Mercola but don't agree with some of his ideas, especially vaccinations. He ignores obvious facts so his logic is flawed. At least he consults with conventional experts and presents his evidence clearly and concisely. 

I'm also a huge supporter of an Australian who has an impressive record with a small but meaningful percentage of people who have recovered from metastatic cancer and I'm waiting for studies into his patients to be completed.  I do believe there is something in the alternative methods that can and does work in the right combination, but proper studies are required to pin down what that something is.  I believe studies of those who have recovered from documented metastatic cancer are urgently needed to find the common strategies and weed out the other factors.

When you say  "a strategy to build your body and its defenses to help protect against mets.", there are no proven strategies and many that may work for some people.  Things like healthy living, exercise etc have been shown to reduce the percentage of progressions.  There are many studies but none are a guarantee.  These are the strategies I use, the ones that have been studied, plus some others I feel comfortable with trying due to their early promise. 

I was pleased to see Timothy recently post about a study showing there may be some benefit after all to an alkaline diet in fighting cancer. I hope that gets further studied.  I like those who keep an open mind and enjoy the debates (unless people become abusive) as there are often gems of wisdom in the arguments. And I love all the BCO members who try to help and support each other even when they may disagree.

I guess I need to keep the attach signature box checked in order to have my dx show up.

PattyGroves - for your information I did not have a recurrence - I had 2 separate primaries, one of which was not discovered until 1 year later - totally different pathology - no chemo needed for it. So, no conventional treatment has not failed me. I'm sure if I had not had surgery I'd probably be dead by now.

PattyGroves, It's a logical fallacy to point to failures and use them as an excuse to reject the whole treatment.  Those who have died are part of the 1 in 5 who succumb, but that ignores the 4 in 5 who would have died but their lives are saved by current treatments. I find that's the theme on this thread and it's a shame.  WIthout modern medicine, the death rate in America from BC would be around 150,000 to 190,000, depending on how many with DCIS are included in the statistics and how many of those would have recovered.

Patty,  I believe the chemo for primary cancers is supposed to catch any circulating cancer cells, possibly released during the surgery.  It never claimed to eradicate existing tumours.  This is one of the things I find difficult to believe and why I'm doubtful about the efficacy of chemo.  However, it's disturbing to see you use this in a personal way against one of our BCO sisters who is striving to fight off an aggressive form of cancer.

PattyGroves - there was no failure at all - I had an undiagnosed cancer which was missed on the mammogram the year before ie it already existed - chemo did not fail me - in fact it probably saved me as the second one was a rare type that often shows up in lots of lymph nodes - I had clear nodes. So, it stopped it spreading. It is well known that lower grade cancers do not respond to chemo. It is also possible it's grade was lowered by the chemo according to my onc.

You are totally wrong in saying what you have said - it was not a recurrence and chemo did not fail me

Once again a thread going bad... 

I think Susie sees her chemo as a success as she is alive to tell us about it.

There should be no reason to bust on her for that.

I feel the same way about chemo.  Sometimes you do things in life in order to survive.

PattyGroves - I note you have conveniently edited your posts - good for you!!!

I am 2 years out from treatment for HER2+ve bc with no recurrence and no mets, so I would say that's a good result.