My thoughts and questions regarding cancer in general, and inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) in particular:
My wife is in the process of being treated for IBC, and the experience has made me very aware of things I knew nothing about. Like with many other diseases, it is only when they come home to roost you really take time to learn something about them. This IBC matter has opened both of our eyes to things we had heard about, but never had to cope with or make decisions concerning before.
Let me begin by stating my views concerning medicine in general, and the use of pharmaceuticals in particular. What I am going to say is not intended to offend anyone, I honestly feel doctors have been forced by both laws and policy to ignore many of the natural remedies that can treat and help heal the sick. As a believer. I know God created minerals, vitamins, and herbs, to be used to both prevent and treat many diseases. While I am not totally against the use of pharmaceuticals, I also don’t believe they should always be used over the natural alternatives by default. How can a man or woman call themselves a medical professional, if they have little or no knowledge regarding substances that were created to maintain our health when used in a proper dosage and manner?
On the plus side, there are now many medical doctors who have had the courage to use the “best of both worlds� in treating their patients. They use standard medicine for certain diseases, but only if there is no known natural remedy available for whatever the problem may be. Some also combine natural and pharmaceutical remedies, providing their patients with a sound and well rounded type treatment routine. I have said all of this, because I believe my wife’s response to her ‘standard treatments’ were enhanced by her usage of some mineral, vitamin, and herbal, supplements.
When she was initially diagnosed with IBC, she had not been taking any type of supplements and she admits her eating habits were not what they should have been either. Even her medical doctor told her the primary reason she was able to get the cancer in the first place was, because her immune system was shot and ineffective. In my humble opinion. I believe if she had been eating better and taking supplements, her immune system may have been able to prevent the cancer from forming in the first place.
Initially, we considered relying on strictly ‘alternative methods’ to heal her. While I would have loved this option, there were problems that made the option very risky at best. One of the negatives regarding “alternative cures� is, there are just too many different opinions as to what works best. At least the doctors using standard forms of treatment pretty much follow the same basic treatment path, even if it is rather archaic in my opinion. Since IBC spreads so fast, there was not enough time to try various alternative remedies without a great degree of risk. Unless we picked the right one initially, chances time she the cancer would have spread beyond the point of no return.
This being the case, my wife decided to endure the misery and pain of the standard treatment fare. She was initially treated with a chemo drug named Adriamycin ( call the “red devil� by the other cancer patients), to help shrink the cancer prior to removing her infected breast. Just before she started the chemo treatments, I asked her to begin taking daily doses of vitamins, minerals, and herbs, to boost her immune system during her chemo treatments. While we did not go into the specifics regarding the supplements, her chemo doctor said he saw no problem with our plan.
She responded very well to the ‘red devil,’ while others taking the same drug had to be given shots and other medications because they were rendered weak and overly tired by the chemo drug. During the months she took the initial round of chemo, her blood count kept within very good guidelines. Her nurse and her doctor were amazed by how well she responded to the treatments, but neither really much about the supplements she was taking on a daily basis.
While the dosages and the supplements were quite varied, there was an natural herb called Graviola that is claimed to be 10,000 times more effective on killing cancer cells than Adriamycin is. There are thousands of references to it all over the internet, and those who discovered the drug insist it ONLY destroys cancer cells. In all honestly, I cannot say that the Graviola or any of the other natural remedies made the difference in the way she responded to the chemo regiment. Based on the reality of what her response was to the chemo, I tend to believe these supplements were helping repair the damage the chemo was doing to her body during her treatments. After she completed the chemo, her breast was removed. She was still taking supplements, and her wounds from the surgery healed very fast too.
As planned by her doctor, she is now taking 33 radiation treatments. The radiation oncologist told my wife to stop taking any supplements, while undergoing the radiation treatments. He told me the radiation creates ‘free radicals’ to help fight active cancer cells. I don’t really understand this, as “free radicals� are one of the primary causes of cancer! Nevertheless, I am sure he knew something about their usage that was unknown to me.
After her radiation treatments are completed, she is going to be given some additional chemo to help insure the cancer does not return. She will take a different chemo drug, but we are told it is not as harsh as the Adriamycin was to endure. As soon as she has completed the radiation, she will begin to take the vitamins, minerals, and herbal remedies that have kept her blood count and immune system “up� through the prior chemo regiment.
The doctor also told my wife she has a problem with her HER2/nue protein production, making it more likely she will have problems with cancer in the future. She will be taking Herceptin weekly, which is a new treatment with a good track regarding the HER2/nue issue. The part that stood out to me regarding the Herceptin treatment was the fact it also worked well because it works to boost the IMMUNE SYSTEM. To my way of thinking, the immune system is by far the best way to prevent and eradicate problems with cancer.
While I would never tell anyone what they should do regarding curing cancer, I believe it is most foolish to overlook the remedies God has created in the form of vitamins, herbs, and minerals. Even in heaven, there is a tree spoken of with the ability to heal:
Revelation 22:2 In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.
This being the case, don’t you believe there is merit to looking to natural God-made remedies to help heal our disease here upon earth? Why not use the best of both worlds, when dealing with sickness and disease? I am hoping the natural supplements will build up my wife’s immune system enough to ward off any cancer in the future, so she can enjoy life without any more problems like IBC.
One final point: Most of the ads and articles pertaining to Graviola mention the positive results it created, were BURIED by the pharmaceutical company that first discovered the herbs potential to heal cancer. The inter articles name names, and the authors of these articles would be sued if they could not backup their claims regarding this agenda. It is said the reason the findings concerning the herb were kept secret was, the drug manufacturers could not patent a natural herb, therby making it a low or no profit remedy for cancer.
I have to wonder why it has taken so many years for cancer treatments to improve as much as they have. The idea of burning a witch to ‘cure her,� is something like the approach so-called modern medicine uses to treat cancer patients. If chemo (poison), and radiation (burning), and the removal of body parts is the best options available in our day and time, I believe we need to really investigate the medical and the pharmaceutical communities that now control the healing processes regarding cancer. Like as with the Graviola plant, I believe there are valid reasons to suspect there are forces working in the background to keep cancer a high-profit money making business!
I could be totally wrong, but I would hate to think that with all of the years of research and billions of dollars spent to fight cancer, we are still using stone-age tactics to fight against this enemy called cancer. If the same degree of progress was accepted in most other professional endeavors, we would still be dying from things that have been cured or controlled for many years now. I am very thankful for what the medical doctors have done for my wife, but this does not mean I have questions and reservations as to how cancer is treated…
Charlie, Sandra’s husband…
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