Choosing An Alternative Cancer Treatment – How A Breast Cancer Sufferer Made Her Decision
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Barbara: What were your impressions of the cancer industry?
I believe in being empowered, and I think that leads into the question of what I think about the typical approach of the medical establishment toward women with breast cancer. The medical establishment has a hard time dealing with an empowered patient. I do believe that there is a cancer industry, and it is unfortunate. I agree that cancer is big business. The medical establishment and doctors in general are indoctrinated toward a certain point of view. They have their established protocols that are supposedly based on science and research. But as a person who utilizes research, I felt that they used it inappropriately. Because I understand the use of statistics, I realize that the model you create cannot be a one size fits all model. But the doctors seem to think using a one size fits all set of statistics for everyone is acceptable. There is just not enough individualization in the way the medical establishment deals with people.
As a consumer of physical or medical model services you have to be knowledgeable, assertive and empowered. You have to make your physician deal with you as an individual, as a whole person, not a statistic. The individual person has to be willing to say — I am more than this cancer. I am a mind, a psychology, a social being with responsibilities to my family, to my work. All of those things have to be considered. But the only thing physicians want to look at are statistics about some tumor.
Barbara: Do you want to describe what kind of breast cancer you had?
Crescence: I don’t really care what kind of breast cancer I had. It is all generic in my mind. The stages and grades that the medical establishment gives it are artificial and have no real meaning. Articles I have read about holistic healers say that doctors who take an alternative approach really don’t care about the pathology reports. This is because that tumor is no longer in your body. I went to a surgeon but I didn’t do the chemotherapy or radiation, or the life long follow up of drugs. I chose the alternative approach to the after-surgery treatments based on the information I got as an empowered person.
What the oncologists gave me that made me turn away from their treatments was a discussion of statistics that had nothing to do with me as a person. It was just statistics put forth as part of the standard of care protocol. I couldn’t understand why they didn’t want to give me tests to determine how I was after the first intervention. But they weren’t interested in the Me that was there. They were only interested in the pieces of me they had removed. The pieces were what was important–the actual human being that was there in front of them was not important. This didn’t make any sense to me. I asked the oncologist, “Aren’t you going to do any blood tests to see the levels of my hormones or the levels of cancer antibodies in my blood to see how I am reacting right now, four weeks after the surgery?” She said, “No, because we have data, all these statistics that determine what we are going to do to you.”
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Reading what Crescence said, was as if I wrote it myself. I feel the exact same way about how I was treated after surgery for my breast cancer (stage 3 or 4). I refused even to have a PET Scan done, is CT scans are now known to CAUSE cancer and I didn’t need any more of it! Anyhow, I am doing nutrition and supplement therapy, along with exercising and keeping my weight down. I feel great and don’t even think about the fact I have or had cancer