My mother was treated for IBS for years. Her doctors never even considered that it might be cancer in her intestines. It was. In fact, it was a rare and hard-to-treat form. Now she has terminal cancer, because it metasticized to the liver, ovaries, and the rest of the abdomen.

They did an emergency hysterectomy and took out the worst part of the bowel cancer, but they can’t fix the liver, the whole thing is infested with tumors.

However, Mom remains strong (mentally) and in control. Her cancer’s a rarer form (her oncologist has only seen 3 cases), so she’s researched it, had meetings with specialists, talked to other people with the same disease online, even gone to conferences (these were geared at both patients and doctors). And so far she’s made it almost 3 years since the crisis. She’s probably had it for 6. Right now there’s an experimental treatment she found which is doing her a lot of good. Lucky for us, since the other methods weren’t working.

She makes a great role mode as a patient. She listens to her doctors, collects information, reads up on her condition, researches treatments, gets second opinions, finds the best specialists, she’s a trooper!

-MM

here’s the site: jilliankay.natureswellnesssecret.com

I did hear a rumor once that a guy I know had symptoms of colon cancer for over a year and he tried as slew of herbal remedies without seeing a doc. By the time he got to the doctor his cancer had progressed so far that it killed him. I don’t know if it’s true, but I heard it from a few people that knew him.

SO that goes with the theme that the key to your life lies within you. You make the decisions, so you must take resposibility for them. If you take bad medical advice, who pays the price? You do. If you fail to take good medical advice, who pays the price? You do. It’s up to you to determine what is good advice and what is bad advice.

My wife is a doctor, and she told me how a few months ago a patient came in to get some blood tests done. Since she didn’t know the patient, she asked what the tests were for. The patient said that her naturopath requested them.

My wife advised that she does not order blood tests this way, and said that if she performed the blood test the patient would have to agree to be followed up.

Now it turns out that the patient had an abnormal platelet count. The patient was recaledl, but the patient refused to be referred to an oncologist for further investigation. Luckily for the patient, another doctor gave this person the same advice and the patient is in hospital for treatment of late stage cancer.

While one should take a doctor’s advise with due care, one should never be entirely dismissive of a doctor’s opinion. Given so much information is available on the internet, it’s important for one to do a bit more research on their own and then discuss with their practitioner what one’s concern is.

Because it sounds like the same guy I had for my kidney stones.

All in all, a good article. After my had a broken knee (fractured tibular plateau), her doctor failed to mention that for some people the restrictive nature of a leg cast can cause clots to form… and then lead to a pulmonary embollism. And that is just what she had a week later.

She was one of the lucky 10% that walk away without a stroke, or permanent heart or lung damage. But, if we had known this was a possibility, we wouldn’t have dithered at home for 30 minutes trying to figure out what was wrong before we called the ambulance.

That doctor and I had a long, serious discussion about his responsibility to alert patients to potential hazards in the treatments he prescribes.