Pete Lost at Sea

tanstaafl said:

...their site ID-registration linking requirements are a little tedious and/or invasive.  If I want a byline, a burner pseudonym,  or linked/verified ID, our desired choices should be made easy for potential commenters.  I typically don't bother with anything that requires Google/Discus etc login.  Also conversation volume begets more volume to beget a real conversation.

Tanstaafl, if you want to give easy responses to Pete, (as you said his blog doesn't allow ease), then go to ColonChat where you can find him easily and "talk" to him easily.  He doesn't have to be here for you to "chat" easily with him, there you can hear him be cured, then not cured, then cured, then not cured, then cured.  I don't think he can quite make up his mind as to let people know if he is cured by his German clinics, or that he isn't but darn near getting there because of his German clinics.  Then I saw he said he was cured of mets in lung and liver etc., but then writes on another post that he has a surgeon in Germany willing to take out his lungs mets.  You have to determine which is a lie and which is the truth, because I don't think Pete knows anymore at this point.

I feel sorry for him, I have since he went off the deep end and started calling us sheep and our oncologists as killers, I feel sorry for him, and more so, for his family, my heart aches for their hardships.

Winter Marie

arrogant to me, but many people are like that. I just skipped past his posts and didn't read them. They were too confusing. When I first read his posts, I did see some of the negativity with chemo and thought it rather odd since many people on this site are fighting for their lives. 

 I do pray that he gets well and I hope his family is doing well and are able to handle all of this craziness.

I'm sorry that he hurt so many people on this site. I have found nothing but kindness from everyone here and I want to thank you all. There are aome days that I start losing hope for my brother and then I come here and am inspired by so many of you.

I wish you all good health and happiness.

Lin

UncleBuddy said:

He came across as

arrogant to me, but many people are like that. I just skipped past his posts and didn't read them. They were too confusing. When I first read his posts, I did see some of the negativity with chemo and thought it rather odd since many people on this site are fighting for their lives. 

 I do pray that he gets well and I hope his family is doing well and are able to handle all of this craziness.

I'm sorry that he hurt so many people on this site. I have found nothing but kindness from everyone here and I want to thank you all. There are aome days that I start losing hope for my brother and then I come here and am inspired by so many of you.

I wish you all good health and happiness.

Lin

Thanks Lin. There have been a number of skeptic - CAM exchanges that drove posters away, en masse, and have severely damaged participation, silencing many, and have even damaged the archives of the Colorectal forum over the last 2-3 years with wide ranging deletions of valuable experience.  While some CAM posts might be insufficiently critical, over confident, prematurely confident, or abrasive, some "skeptical views" have been histrionics that had no science foundations and were manipulative or unfair in the extreme.  Some of the overt hostility and actions to nonstandard treatments are corrosive to the soul and likely to magnify differences, flaws and disagreements to those not destroyed outright or driven away.  Some new posters with real science backgrounds were assaulted and cut down from their first posts for exhibiting interest in foreign/experimental/unproven treatments.  

Pete's writing style was not my cup of tea either, and it got more strained with time.  I know that Pete is permanently gone here, but let me assure you, guilt is a many splendored thing.

...some of [Pete's] negativity with chemo...

Like many, Pete suffered liver damage and lingering side effects with FOLFOX.  Originally a stage III, he recurred and was very dissatisfied with the prior treatment, the treatment(s) offered (or not offered) and standard options.  No one likes to be written off, Pete struggled hard to find a way out of the corner to gain more time with less damage, and hope for a cure.  His journey, good and bad, is one more to consider when we make our choices and he gave us some rare views into previously unfamiliar places and treatments.     

I can only suggest that people reflect on their experiences and not  disrupt, interrupt or denigrate the choices and experience of others, lest it spiral out of civility and damage the collective wisdom here, again.  One can disagree civilly, factually and concisely without vituperation. Some of the long time survivors now silent, here much earlier than me, have commented how much of a hollow shell this CRC forum has become compared to 2-4 years ago.  We really need to heal and grow again.  That can only be done with respectful discourse on a long term basis, from the start.

listening to people with accents is interesting (Pete is from Australia, no?)  and i would be all for it if this was an audio forum, but since it is not i have no opinion (about this subject).

annalexandria said:

I don't think CSN is a "hollow shell" at all...

people come and go on these forums.  There are other places people post, or they move more into survivor category and don't feel like posting as much, or in some cases, they die, unfortunately.  Forums have ups and downs, just like groups in real life.  But right at the moment this forum feels largely pleasant and supportive...until Pete comes up in conversation.

And the issue with Pete has very little (if anything) to do with his treatment choices.  It was about his percieved lack of honesty, his unkindness, his lack of suppprt for others, and his efforts to sell unproven therapies in order to get his own at a discounted price.  But people have said this a million times, and the old "alt therapy vs conventionals" theme just keeps coming up.  it makes this whole conversation depressingly pointless.

I just read his last two posts on his blog, well, attempted to read anyway.  My take is that he thinks anyone in treatment in the US are fools and CSN has been mean to him.  Why would he want to come back so badly?  He claims he wishes us well, but the next words are something like "you'll get yours in the end" to all of us he claims are criticizing him.

I'm sure none of us here wish bad things to anyone, but I think I'm done spending anymore time on him.