I get asked this question a lot by those undergoing conventional treatments as well as people who don't understand why I'd do conventional treatments if I really believe the alternative stuff is helpful. It's a little hard to answer now, looking back on everything. I almost have to close my eyes to even remember what it was like in my shoes right after diagnosis, as weird as that sounds.
First, I wasn't going to choose integrative care in the beginning. I thought I could kind of cobble together my own integrative plan without the help of my oncologist or holistic doctor, though I didn't even know what integrative oncology was at the time.
I bought a lot of books before I even received my diagnosis. As soon as there was a known mass, I bought books like Anticancer and Chris Beat Cancer. I also changed my diet immediately.
At first, I cut out all red meat, sugar, and refined carbs. My friend Laurel encouraged me to start juicing, and a family friend, Beth, gave me a juicer. So, in two weeks, I had already made some significant changes to my life.
My surgery went well by the oncologist's eyes. For me, it was a nightmare. Long story short, I was left for 5 hours almost alone while they tried to get me stabilized because I'd lost so much blood, my blood pressure kept dropping dangerously low. My onc at the time, though a decent enough guy, had taken off for the day. I couldn't get anyone to tell me if I had cancer. My nurse eventually took pity on me and sneaked me my cell phone so I could get the news of my diagnosis from my husband over the phone. When I was finally taken to my room, my blood pressure began to fall again and I had an allergic reaction to one of the drugs. My oxygen was low. The nurse pretty much stayed in my room the entire night, trying to put out one fire after another. I didn't think I was going to make it out of the hospital.
I actually cried when I stood in the sunlight again.
I knew that the assembly line care I got there wasn't really what I'd expected after that experience. There were several more things that happened which I wasn't pleased about, but the big eye opener was when I went in for my first chemo.
Before this, I was terrified of chemo. I remember one day, my mom came to help me after the surgery. I told her I didn't think I was strong enough to do chemo. She tried to argue with me, but I stubbornly refused to hear it. I couldn't imagine a way that chemo wouldn't ruin my kids' lives. My oncologist's office had already told me that I was incurable and that I would be battling cancer for the rest of my life. Listening to them, it sounded like chemo was a last ditch effort to prolong my life for a few months. I expected the entire time to be full of me vomiting and sleeping, and I didn't want my kids to experience that.
Somehow, I ended up agreeing to it, but just barely.
The night before my chemo appointment, my husband and I kneeled to pray. I still was unsure of my choice, so we prayed that if I wasn't supposed to get chemo there, for God to please stop me from doing it.
Then, the next day, I had an anaphylactic reaction to one of the medications and was sent home. (I actually vomited in my underwear, which is a funny story, but you'll have to go to the Before Ten Fifty-Two tab to read it.) It was clear to me that I wasn't supposed to get chemo there.
I had just happened to get another round of cancer books right before that. One of them was Cancer Secrets. The integrative doctor who wrote the book talked about how serious cancer is and that holistic patients typically do not fair as well as those who get chemo.
Ouch. Not what I wanted to hear.
I was desperate then, and I looked his practice up. It was somewhere in the south, a plane ride away, but I contacted his office, anyway.
He didn't respond. I'll never know if it was because they didn't get it, they were too busy, or what, but I never got a return call or email.
I also never got a return call or email from another doctor I contacted.
A third doctor's office tried to get me in to see them, but my hospital wouldn't send the records.
All this time, my current chemo nurse didn't call me back with a plan.
It was around that time that I started searching for integrative oncologists. I hadn't read the book Life Over Cancer, so I didn't know of Dr. Keith Block through his book. When I found his center's page, I opened it and got goosebumps. I told my husband, "This is where I'm supposed to go!"
And, I did.
From the day I contacted them, I had a patient advocate that was contacting me to make sure I understood everything.
What is amazing is that my chemo experience, while hard, was not impossible. I really think the reason I was able to get through the rounds of chemo prescribed was the care I received from them. They're not at all assembly-line. The supplements chosen for me helped me to manage the effects of chemo.
Now, I've learned much more in my crash course on cancer, and I am very glad that I did get chemo.
Our immune system typically takes care of single cancer cells. Even a couple, it can tackle. However, microtumors full of hundreds of cancer cells quickly overwhelm your immune system. While I do think that supplements are excellent and important, I also realize that killing and removing the bulk of the tumor load helps our bodies to tackle the remaining cells.
Cancer is so tricky. So many people say things like, "Surgery and chemo make cancer worse. I had surgery/chemo and then my cancer exploded." Well, yes, the removal of the momma tumor can cause accelerated growth in some instances for a few reasons, there are also things that can be done to help mitigate that. The alternative is to just cross your fingers and hope that your body can take care of billions and billions of cancer cells on its own.
Not only that, but cancer naturally gets worse. It's kind of what it does. As cancer grows, it gets harder to treat because it finds new ways of getting what it needs to thrive.
I'm not saying chemo is wonderful. It's not. But I've read so many false claims like, "Chemo isn't effective against ovarian cancer." Well, that's simply not true. In fact, for high grade serous carcinoma, the cancer that makes up over 80% of ovarian cancers, almost everyone who receives chemo gets into remission or NED. It's excellent at killing most of the cancer cells.
It's just not excellent at curing cancer.
But chemo shouldn't be thought of as the cure, I now realize. Chemo, like surgery, is simply there to reduce the amount of cancer in your body.
So, why did I choose integrative cancer treatment? Because I think it's the best shot we have at true health. I know statistically that holistic cancer treatment does not have as much success as the holistic health market would have you believe. (And yeah, if you hate "Big Pharma," you should take a look at some of the shady stuff these holistic practitioners do.) I also know that chemo isn't curative in most cases. So, that leaves me with trying to somehow combine the two so that I'm treating the root of the disease while also trying to get rid of what I can.
That's, unfortunately, the best we have in cancer care at the moment.
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