Thinking..thinking...and THINKING

Melanie67

Hi Mojo, Glad to hear that

Hi Mojo, Glad to hear that your surgery went well.  I must say that I have had some of the same thoughts regarding chemo.  I cut my "mop up" chemo short as I felt it was just doing too much damage to my body.  That being said, I have three small lung nodules that will probably need to be addressed this summer and I know that chemo will be suggested, and I will probably agree to a limited amount.  In the meantime I have changed my diet (I rarely eat animal products), take supplements (vitamins and boswellia), and 160 mg of aspirin.  The research regarding aspirin is very interesting.  My oncologist recommended 81 mg, but I read numerous studies which looked at anywhere between 81 mg and 365 mg and I made the decision to go with 160 mg.  In the end, it is an individual choice and I know you will make the one that is right for you.

Melanie

JanJan63

Some thoughts

I also looked at as much information as possible when trying to make a decision whether or not to do mop up chemo. I couldn't find anything definitive. Mine had to be put off due to complications after surgery and that makes it less effective as well. But I chose to go for it because if the cancer came back I'd have kicked myself for not doing it. I did it, Folfox, and it almost killed me. I was in the hospital for 4 months. I won't bore you with the details and many people on here know my story. But my point is that my cancer returned just over a year later, or spread or whatever. If I'd refused the chemo I'd be angry with myself and blame myself. There'd have been no way to know that it would come back anyway. Or maybe it would have come back sooner. Or maybe if I'd had the chemo within the time frame of when I was supposed to or been able to finish the treatments it wouldn't have. But how could I have known?

The latest findings are that over 75% of cancer cases have no discernable cause. So there's no black and white or definitive answers. How frustrating is that!

And I'm not at all a believer in 'big pharma' having the cure but not producing it for their own financial gains. People all over the world are trying to find the cure. It would take the complicity of thousands of people to not reveal it. Most developed countries have public medical coverage, how would that help the government to keep paying to help people with cancer for their treatments? Different cancers require different treatments and even within the same cancer category most people have different responses to treatments. Losing hair to colon cancer chemo, not very often. Xeloda being effective? It did nothing for me but has worked for other people. The immunotherapy chemo I'm on now? It doesn't work for everyone they tested my tumour to see if it would be effective for it and it was.

Basically, almost every cancer requires a different treatment and within that cancer category there will be different treatments. Raising your immune system helps your body but doesn't kill cancer cells. The body just doesn't recognise cancer as something it needs to fight. Not eating sugar won't help. Besides being almost impossible, your healthy cells need it to survive. Many of us know of a past member on here who decided to forgo chemo and just use CTM (Chinese traditional medicine). He's not with us any longer. Very nice, knowledgible man.  As mentioned, people go to mexico for treatment. The only two people I know of who did that are both gone, one actually died there.

You can't eat right to get rid of it but eating right will help with strength and that's important. Exercise is supposed to help. Mindfullness as well because stress is bad for it. But can you do natural things to get it to go? Not likely at all.

I've predicted on here that the cure will involve introducing a bacteria or virus that will alert the body to the presence of the cancer so it will fight it. I think that's how some people become NED for seemingly no reason. It's just a confusing ailment. They've found prehistoric skeletons showng cancer in the leg or foot. What the heck? But eventually they will find something and I want to see it happen. There have been many success with mice but they don't transfer to humans when they test it. And they pretty much only use late stage patients for studies because they have nothing to lose, so how does that effect findings?

Jan 

Butt

I know that a Sloan Kettering protocol is to do a mop up chemo. Butt.