An Alternative approach to Stage IV Health and choices

Not really sure what kind it is. I will know more tomorrow. I go see my NO tomorrow so will get hopefully some more details. It's new is all I know. Feeling a little less freaked out. Still have my moments.

How are you making out?

I continue to do well, except I had the flu three weeks ago and still have a residual cough. Maybe it's time to see the doctor. So glad you have your mom to help out. Keep us posted on what's happening.

Plumblossom, if you wouldn't mind,  could you share where you have the local liver hypothermia done? I asked my NO about this once before and he looked at me like I was from mars. Obviously, not available where I am, but I'm sure willing to travel. If you prefer to answer privately, I understand.

Thank you, plumblossom.

pearlady- I think the UK member said "Hypothermia" which is cooling way low body heat as oppose to hyperthermia which would be high temperature. I had "cryotherapy " on my cervix many years ago for precancerous lesion. Pap test ave always been negative ever since. This treatment was done by freezing the cervix.

plumblossom- I would like to hear about how they do this therapy?

As far as cannabis.Medical marijuana is legal now in Washington State but I too do not think I would handle it well. I hear it's good for pain but as a cure- no it is not.

thanks so much.

Hi all....not sure if this is where I can jump in so hope I don't step on a discussion here...I was considering going to the Block Center for Integrative Medicine in Illinois and wondered if anyone has any knowledge or experience with them....thanks...appreciate the feedback.

Grammy just reviewed the previous posts. Plumblossom did say hyperthermia. I know that this is done in quite a few clincs in Germany. I believe Leggo had said hypothermia in her subsequent post.
But anxious to hear from Plumblossom to confirm and to also advise how the treatment is done.

Hi Leggo

Yes of course, I make way too many typos. Especially with my slightly stiff hands due to the numerous drugs. Would certainy love to go to Germany for the Hyperthermia, but I've heard the cost is about $20,000. After discussing with my onc, I decided to purchase the BioMat. He seems to think there will be some benefit. Who knows. If I really got results from consistent use of the BioMat I will have to rethink going to Germany. I myself am not in a position to not do chemo, but I do many alternative and complementary treatments along with. Sometimes you have to listen to your inner self and know what's right for you.

Leggo I agree with you that if it offers pain relief it is priceless. I would think that if its of any benefit to killing cancer cells it has to be used consistently. My own thought is that if it is of any benefit it would have to be used over an extended period of time. I really have no pain, but my main issue is neuropathy. My onc thinks it may be of some benefit to that, but killing the cancer cells would be the best outcome. Didn't even know that you could rent them. But at least that's a way to try it before you buy.

I had never heard of the biomat so I did a quick search on it. I think their website says they cost $1600. That's a nice chunk of change. If I ever came across a place that rented them, I'd have to try it out of curiosity.

Not you plum, me relying on predictive text. 

This may have nothing to do with anything, but since I was diagnosed with mets, my temperature has always been 1 to 1- 1 1/2  degrees lower than normal, consistently. On a particular busy day at the clinic, I just happened to notice, that those with advanced cancers had the same issue. Felt too weird confronting the onc or nurse with "why", but since hyperthermia seems to have benefits, it kind of makes one wonder WTH is going on in a body system to account for such a drop in temp. Hmmmm. Just makes me wonder, normal temp = healthy immune system, lower temp, not so much. Technically, we should have a higher temp with our bodies fighting cancer, so it's obvious to me that our bodies don't recognize cancer cells as the enemy. 

All makes me think hyperthermia might be a good bet to bring someone's immune system back to snuff after a cancer diagnosis. Probably way more complicated, but it does make one think.

leggo, maybe too simplistic an explanation, but low thyroid comes to mind as a possible explanation for yhe sub normal body temp.

leggo, I've learned that being in the normal thyroid range per conventional docs may not be optimal for us per naturopathic docs. My body temp normalized when I got on some natural thyroid med, and I also have half a thyroid.

leggo, give me a day or two and I will look mine up and give you the correct names. I just recall that although my first test appeared in low "normal" range. my ND said no, way too low by her standatds and she RX'd a natural thyroid med by Westhroid.

Hyperthermia is offered in the the US at Thomas Jefferson University and at Duke University (that I could find). The dailymail article also mentioned Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Centre in Houston (see excerpt below)

http://hospitals.jefferson.edu/departments-and-services/thermal-oncology-program/

http://www.ascopost.com/issues/january-15,-2014/using-hyperthermia-for-cancer-treatment-proofs,-promises,-and-uncertainties.aspx

For a cheaper heating alternative than the biomat, there is the far infrared heating belt, ca. 200 Dollars which could provide heat 4-7 hours. Pillows filled with rice or cherry stones and heated in the microwave cost almost nothing. I used this method, one on my feet and the other on my back, every night for pain relief and warmth. The infrared belt has the advantage of being wearable in the car and outdoors.

More on fevers and cancer:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1313773/Can-fever-cure-cancer-Jordan-baffled-doctors-leukaemia-vanished-new-evidence-suggests-remarkable-explanation-.html

Several reports, including a recent paper in the Netherlands Journal Of Medicine, have linked a significant number of spontaneous disappearances of leukaemia to fever caused by serious infections.

Now, scientists believe they understand how this might work. There are two theories: the first is that an infection serious enough to provoke a fever response can push the body's immune system into a high-powered, hypersensitive state.

This helps the patient's immune system detect the fact that cancer cells are subtly different from normal healthy cells. It then attacks the tumour cells as though they are infectious invaders.

In everyday life, our immune systems may wipe out many cancer cells unobtrusively, so we never know we were at risk. But, too often, such tumour cells can be sufficiently similar to normal ones that they sneak under the radar of a normally-running immune system and develop into serious cancers.

The other theory is that the high temperature itself attacks and destroys the cancer.

,,,,

Indeed, now some doctors have gone so far as to suggest we should intentionally create fevers in cancer patients. Professor Heinz-Uwe Hobohm, of Berlin's Technical University of Applied Sciences, recently called for controlled fever to be used as part of chemotherapy regimens.

It may kick-start the body to kick out tumours without patients having to take cancer-vaccine drugs.

'Today we should be able to induce and control fever much better than 100 years ago,' he wrote in the British Journal Of Cancer. In fact, in the U.S., Dr Joan Bull, a pioneering oncologist at Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Centre in Houston, is already heating cancer patients' bodies to boost the immune system.

'We're using a temperature you would get with a bad case of the flu,' says Dr Bull.

Two days after having chemotherapy and immune-boosting drugs, patients are put into an infra-red 'total-body thermal therapy' enclosure nicknamed the 'hot box', for eight hours under sedation.

Their temperature is carefully monitored as it is raised from just under 37c to 40c. 'The fever is giving a startle, a cry for help to the immune system to say, arm yourself, get out here, do something,' Dr Bull says.

She believes if the heat can wake up the immune system, her team can use less chemotherapy and reduce the side-effects which such strong drugs can wreak. Dr Bull is using the experimental therapy on patients with hard-totreat pancreatic cancers and smallcell lung cancers.

'Whole-body fever-range thermal therapy is a gentler therapy than using radiotherapy, which can hit a lot of the body's vital structures,' she says. 'The fever itself is safe; the patient is sedated, not because it hurts, but if you've ever had a fever, you know how crabby you get. We let them sleep.'