Saturday, April 28, 2007

Cancer Stem Cells

Been reading a lot of medical journals lately and there have been not one or two, but several authors agreeing that there are cancer stem cells. These cells are pratically immortal and have no effects when treated with chemotherapeutic agents. In fact, as one of the authors suggested, they undergo further mutations when they come in contant with chemo drugs. 

I guess then that chemotherapeutic agents are only good against the cancer cells but useless on cancer stem cells. We must be able to come up with substances that are able to revert these stem cells back to normal.

Friday, April 27, 2007

Demolished in 1 day

Its sometimes so hard and disconcerting to discover and realize that one's work and patients' achievement can be suddenly wiped out in a matter of minutes.

This is exactly just what happened to my patient with breast cancer. After nursing her back to health, physically, mentally and emotionally; her sister-in-law who is also an MD comes into the "rescue" and advised her to do chemotherapy, and then changed her mind and told her to just enjoy the last few months of her short life.

I was angry, to see such a tactless person, telling someone that they have a few months left. And to think that these are doctors, they should encourage not discourage them.

I have to go back and build the walls back up again.

Technorati Tags: , , ,



Powered by ScribeFire.

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Breast Cancer

I took pictures of this patients before and after 3 weeks of treatment. I was taken aback at the speed at which the tumor has shrunk. Upon measuring this mass, it was at the beginning around 13cm, and at the time I took the second set of pictures, it was already around 6cm.

We did some iscador injections as well as Wobenzymes, EFAs (Budwig Diet) etc.

At present, even though there was really a big difference in the size, the family is now very adamant at chemotherapy, I won't interfere. I give them advice, I don't decide for my patients. Their paths must be carved by their own decisions rather than by others.

We, as an individual must be able to decide what is best for ourselves, provided we have all the information at hand. I want the patients to have the full satisfation and free from regret of what they are doing or have done. So that they won't be constantly looking back at their decisions if it was the right one or not.

Emotional Freedom Technique

A patient with panic attacks when she is stuck in traffic or too many people in 1 room, came to me for help. We did the EFTs and on the first try nothing happened, but she did recall herself when she was 6, where she had fear of going inside a movie theater because it was dark.

So we dealt with that issue. And when I asked her to rate her discomfort of anxiety when she was recalling that same event again, she just smiled and said "What I saw was a happy little girl in a dress and pony tail."

Wow, I was so much happy and felt that it had made my day. So even if I have financial difficulty, nothing still beats the knowledge and satisfaction that I have at least helped one soul seeking freedom and independence from their past painful experiences

Monday, April 23, 2007

Tighten my belt

got to admit it, my belt is now tightening a bit. My practice isn't really giving me back the financial rewards that I would wish to have. But its better than what my colleagues earn nowadays.

Whats so hard to balance is the amount of supplies I need to maintain to keep a decent clinic. I'm trying to buy as much as I can without sacrificing the quality that I need.

Supplements are a plenty but quality has a price, and I wouldn't want to sacrifice the quality of the supplements I have. I'm not really the type to buy all the supplements I need, only the ones that are not easily available on the market. And that alone is so hard to balance.

Arrggghhhhh

Friday, April 20, 2007

Metastatic Breast Cancer

After much discussions, my patient has decided to have the CT scan that I have requested. At first she was reluctant, wary of the dye for contrast CT scan.

I knew when she first consulted that her cancer has metastasized. She was still trying to deal with the pain of the tumor as well as the pressures from her family to do chemotherapy (which she was very adamant not to undergo).

After seeing regression in the tumor size, she has to come to the point of asking herself, if there are other concerns that need to be dealt with.

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Tumor Regression



I had just m et my patient with liver cancer who had also lung metastasis. Good news always follows bad news, that's seems to be the pattern in my experiences.

Previously in my blog, I mentioned him to undergo a procedure to divert his bile due to the enlarging liv er tumor. Because of the procedure, he started having difficulty eating, he lost about 20 lbs in less than 2 weeks, which was very alarming. So we had to do something quickly to increase his food intake. He then, decided that its time to end his vegetarianism and started eating meat again. Good thing though, even if he was losing weight, his tumor did not grow larger as I had anticipated.

And then, he was introduced to a pranic healer, and I would say it has helped him a lot. You can see for yourself the change in size of the tumor.

WOW!!! Ain't GOD so wonderful that at the very time we thought that things will go for the worst, it was the other way around!!!

powered by performancing firefox

Sunday, April 08, 2007

Radio talk show

Tomorrow, I'm supposed to talk about cancer prevention and nutrition on radio as invited by my boss at the UP college of medicine.

Wow, that's a first!

Monday, April 02, 2007

In Panic

I just had a talk with my patient who has breast cancer stage III but refuses to do any neoadjuvant chemotherapy prior to surgery. Because of this dilemma, NO SURGEON would want to operate on such a large tumor due to bleeding and other post-op complications.



I had already informed her that at her current situation, surgery is still be the best option. However, since she doesn't want to have anything to do with chemotherapy, I had given her another option which was intra-tumoral injection of iscador. Tumor has visibly shrunk, no more pain and less heaviness on the tumor area.



But unfortunately, she had met a "healer," and without even asking for his medical opinion, he lightly touched her pulse (like TCM doctors do) and tells her that her tumor has metastasized to her spleen and liver.



After this meeting, she was very much shaken like everyone else at her situation. She started having dizziness, pain on the breast and all the things that one might associate with tumor metastasis.



I am incessantly shocked and angry, at this healer, who has no background on any medical or alternative therapies other than what he claims to have read off the books and internet. He has caused great damage not only to her physically bt most of all, the mental anguish of giving her the opinion of stage IV breast cancer, even without asking his opinion.



I just hope I can clear her mind soon.





powered by performancing firefox