In this country, people have the right to participate in treatment choices. But, as they teach you in first aid and first responders training, people reach a point when they no longer are able to make sound, rational choices regarding their conditions.
My father reached that point. He and my mother had been through so much with his metastasized prostate cancer, so much pain, so much dreadful treatment, so much sickness, so much much, that all they had left was desperation. Mom was his primary care giver, and they had believed the surgeon who operated on him 18 years earlier who said, "You'll die from something else, Rudy. You won't die from this cancer."
When the hospice nurse told my mother that my father had gone, my mother said, "What?" Between two of them, two nurses had been there for nearly 24 hours. My father had released his last breath some minutes before, the nurse had steadily checked for heartbeat with her stethoscope, yet my mother was in such bad shape that all she could say was, "What?"
All the doctors agreed that he had fared far better than any other patient than any they had treated. His surgeon wrote about his management of my father's case for a publication. To a one they all told him, "Whatever you're doing, keep doing it."
There has GOT TO BE A WAY to integrate what we know now, the miracles of modern Western medicine--which did treat my father successfully with hormone courses three times and radiation at the end--with what we know now about supportive care and healthy completing treatments.
My father breathed clean air and drank clean country water, ate my mother's marvelous organic food, rested and exercised on their farm, and love and played with his grandchildren who adored him right back. He and I spent time researching the drugs he was being treated with, I kept up with his OTC meds and such, and as a family we were united in working with his squamous cell skin cancer, diabetes and high blood pressure as well.
He lived 18 years and 6 months after his diagnosis. He had surgery, 3 courses of hormone treatment, radiation for palliative purposes, good food, the love of his family, and died peacefully having been relieved of his pain by God 3 weeks beforehand. True--my mother came screaming up the stairs one day near the end hollering, "Your father's been cured! He's been cured!" His pain was gone, he felt strength enough to move his arms and legs, and they thought the cancer was gone. It was a different gift from God than cure as it turned out, but they took it and we all gave thanks! He had 3 good weeks.
He had held so tightly to the dream that he might be cured that he was taking physical therapy treatments even after the doctor released him. His last session was exactly one week before he died.
If I ever get my way, clinics will someday have a staff of health care providers all with only one thought: integrating the astronomical amount of knowledge available to mankind to provide patients with not only the best treatment--which is subjective, as the second article below illustrates--but with the best of both Eastern, Western, and belief system advice.
And love. There must be much, much love.
Someday. Someday.
| Patients need guidance | |
| 'You'll try anything,' says cancer patient - EarthLink - Health News http://shar.es/WIo7 | |
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| Parin Stormlaughter sent this using ShareThis. | |
| Patient choices | |
| 'A sad case': She chose herbals over surgery - EarthLink - Health News http://shar.es/WIWG | |
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| Parin Stormlaughter sent this using ShareThis. | |
