Re: How would you answer this cancer question?
- From: "Max C." <maxc246@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 7 Apr 2006 07:24:19 -0700
Well, I know how *I* would react. I'd want to know every single detail
of the patient's life over the last 12 months. What did he eat? What
did he NOT eat? What life-style changes were made? Were there any
alternative therapies that were tried? If so, when did they begin?
What do *YOU* think helped?
It has been my unfortunate experience that in most cases like this,
medical doctors just shrug their shoulders and say "Well aren't you
lucky?"
Max.
awthrawthr@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
Peter Moran wrote:
<awthrawthr@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1144375490.781548.326980@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I've got a question for you...but first put yourself in this situation:
You've been a board certified radiation oncologist for 30 years...and
you head the largest radiation oncology practice in the US.
So one day, a former patient shows up unexpectedly. The patient had
lung cancer with mets. Your treatment was merely palliative due to the
advanced nature of the disease. So you're kind of surprised to see him
walking into your office under his own power a year later. The truth
is, you thought he had died.
Which is not too suprising because after 30 years of practice, you've
never seen such a case as this. You have never seen a case of remission
in a case anyhting like this. It is only then that you discover that
the patient is cancer free.
So here's the question...do you become curious as to what the patient
did to become well again? Or do you presume that it was just one of
those things?
(A bit of reading between the lines).
Very loaded choices.
They are simple questions which ask what YOU would do. Would YOU try to
find out what might have been different?
Here is what the other doctor wrote:
"I knew the patient's prior condition because this was a patient had
seen a year before. His cancer of the lung had matastasized to his
bones.
"There was no mistaking the improvement in this patient. When I saw
that his new films showed no evidence of cancer in either his bones or
lungs, I had to find out what had caused the remission."
So the question to you is, would you have also tried to find out what
caused the remission?
You should not presume or assume anything. We know
that spontaneous remissions rarely occur, and we know that some patients are
apparently cured by palliative radiotherapy (mostly when metastases are NOT
present). They are two possibilities.
If the patient was using some other treatment that they thought did the
trick, the oncologist might notch that bit of information away until he
encountered a further case, but he almost certainly will have many other
patients who have used the same treatment unsuccessfully.
Instead of answering in the "third person," answer for yourself. You
have one patient standing in front of you who is in remission from lung
cancer with mets to the bones. Meanwhile, in your practice your busy
office, a partnership, is handling about a thousand appointments a
week. Yet even with that huge patient load and 30 years of practice,
you've never seen a case like this turn out the way it did.
It is also the
job of those promoting such treatments to cancer sufferers to be showing
that they work, not him.
Again, please address this from the "first person" point of view. Your
patient walks in. He is not a researcher; he's a patient. Do you become
curious enough to find out what caused the remission? Or do you let it
pass until another patient shows up at your door with a similar result?
Presumably the person promoting the treatment
Try not to get ahead of the situation. You are in your office when a
patient of yours, not the 'promoter,' shows up who is in complete
remission from advanced metastastic lung cancer. You're talking with
him. You presumed he had died, so his presence looking healthy and
normal might be setting you aback.
has
more than this one case - or do they?
The question is would this one patient cause YOU to initiate any
further inquiry. When you respond to that question...rather than
focusing on the promoter...then we can go further. How would you react
to the patient and his recovery?
Peter Moran.
www.cancerwatcher.com
.
- References:
- How would you answer this cancer question?
- From: awthrawthr
- Re: How would you answer this cancer question?
- From: Peter Moran
- Re: How would you answer this cancer question?
- From: awthrawthr
- How would you answer this cancer question?
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