I must have written about this topic several times in my blog that I am beginning to feel like a nag. However, I keep hearing of cancer patients facing the same problem as I did that I find it very frustrating.
It is not uncommon for cancer patients undergoing conventional therapy to feel that they have had enough and want to stop treatment for various reasons. It is tough, very tough to undergo chemo, with all its side-effects, both immediate and long-term. Some felt good after a few doses. For me, it was 3 doses, and I have since found out that I was not the only one. It was like 3 was the optimum, but with each subsequent dose, we felt worse.
I have been through this stage before and I fully understand how a cancer patient at this juncture facing the same problem would feel. It is also at this time that we needed the support of loved ones, and yet the kind of moral support and advice that we received are not always what we wanted. And, usually these are the people who likely have never been through chemo, but somehow feel that they have every right to give advice and make decisions for us.
More often than not, we find our loved ones supporting the doctors instead of us. Their favourite line in echoing the doctors is, 'since you are responding so well, you should continue with the therapy'. Many also have the misconception that we should do everything together, i.e. go with chemo and at the same time, swallow the supplements and whatever alternative medicine there is. Theoretically, it sounds like a brilliant idea, but I beg to differ. For the uninitiated, no matter how much supplements and alternative medicine we pumped into us, these can never matched the degree of toxicity of the chemo.
Chemo cannot get rid of all the cancer cells. A lot depend on the body's immune system to fight back. But how can we expect the body's immune system to do that when it has been so badly battered by chemo? Isn't it possible that the cancer cells will revive faster than the weakened good cells?
Not only that, the chemo caused extensive damage to our liver, kidneys, stomach and heart. For the heart sometimes the damage is irreversible, and for the other organs, recovery is very, very slow and usually not hundred percent.
If the patient is not on any other alternative or complementary treatment, then I have nothing to say. On the other hand, if the patient is on alternative treatment, wouldn't it have been ideal if the concerned ones make an effort to talk to the person responsible for the alternative treatment in order to understand the patient's condition better?
Maybe instead of just giving moral support on the side, take the support one step further, do the ultimate thing - ask to be injected with chemo drugs as well, better still, go dose for dose with us. That would truly be understanding how we feel. Sounds really crazy, but perhaps something worth considering, afterall we have bad cells that are just waiting for the right opportunity and conditions to turn into cancerous cells. That would be a real eye-opener and would be like a preemptive measure for our supporters.
We are aware that a positive attitude helps. We want to be positive too, but how can we remain so when people around us are compelling us to do something against our gut feelings, when they don't have confidence in us and don't give us the right kind of support?
I still remember one of my friends telling me, "I support your decision - at least you are doing something about it". That was like music to my ears, it made me feel so good. Unfortunately, this kind of support is very rare.
As a cancer survivor, who has been there and done that, I can only share my experience. As an outsider, I have no right to urge a fellow cancer patient to heed my advice. In the event that the recovery did not progress as expected, there would be two scenarios here. One is that if I had interfered with the regimen recommended by the doctors, I dare say that blame and accusations would come fast and furious. The other is that if the patient had dutifully followed the advices of family members, friends and doctors who are fully pro-conventional treatment, one or two sentences would suffice to explain the condition, which could be that sometimes there are complications or the cancer was too advanced or aggressive.
Going for more chemo doses than necessary is like 1 step forward towards recovery and 2 steps backward towards organ damage, I could be understating, which could be likely, or I could be exagerating, which I don't think so as that was exactly how I felt at that time.
If chemo is the be all and end all of cancer, why then am I seeing people who keep having relapses despite going through chemo?
I wish that the health ministry would instruct its oncologists to be 'merciful' and not be too heavy-handed in dishing out chemo prescriptions. I wish too, that the board could review the prescribed regimen as and when necessary and that treatment could be interrupted or continued according to the patient's condition and progress.
How wonderful it would be if we could see the effects of chemo and its course of destruction virtually.
I may have been bias here, so I am open to comments and suggestions that tell me how wrong I am about chemo.
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