So the fool was in clinic recently, and discovered a very alarming story. An unfortunate woman presented with a many month history of an exophytic, ulcerated, pedunculated breast cancer that was bulging out of one side of her chest! However, most alarming was that instead of opting for neo-adjuvant therapy, XRT etc… she was bent on using her “Naturopathy” therapy of Vitamins and special anti-tumor diet (she was proud to announce that she was paying $400/month in herbs from an “Educator”). What the heck??
If these “therapies” were soooo effective, then why was the mass growing to the size of a baseball on her chest! Oh, wait, it’s because the patient wasn’t taking her special sugar free diet! =) And she was using topical therapy for breast cancer! I’m not an oncologist, but hey– if you’re using topical therapy for breast cancer, that can’t be a good thing!
Also disturbing is that people selling these therapies have maybe case “reports” or “believe-it-or-not” type stories to sell their products, but when it comes right down to it, they are never responsible for patient outcomes. They just want the $! The poor medical doctors are getting sued for all sorts of ridiculous medical malpractice cases, while random kids and “healers” @ health food stores around the country are making a killing, selling random herbs and spices to cure the world’s ailments, and they never get sued! Nor are they even expected to be held accountable! So wrong on many levels!
And WHY, do so many people believe that if it’s “natural” it must be ok? First, who knows if it will work? I’m not denying that many plant products may have good effects, but why are they so willing to take a pill with some plant extract in it? How is that different than taking a “medicine?” And do people realize that many of today’s drugs are derived from plants, etc… and aren’t they “natural?” The stuff they sell in health food places is also processed to get to PILL form anyways!! And Hey, didn’t they know that stuff like Taxol is a natural product? I guess we should start telling people we’ll give them “Yew Tree Extract” instead. Maybe then people will go for it!
And at the end of the line, when this breast cancer takes over, what’s the health food guy gonna say then? Go Figure! – Fool
3 thoughts on “A Clinic Horror Story or Why are people so into “Natural””
aditya
(Wednesday September 24,2003 - 12:46 am)HI,
I really liked the point u made abt the anti cancer naturopathy (if such a thing however really exists.
However more anusuing, I can see a google ad on the same page (lower rt) advertising a similar elixir…Now i know u aint responsible for the ads, But it is amusing to say the least..
keep it up
Aditya
(oops…I posted before in the wrong place)
medbug
(Wednesday October 1,2003 - 8:52 am)sounds like the poor lady has inflammatory carcinoma of the breast.
Though I am studying for step 2 and should know what her chances are, all I can remember is that they are shitty.
So, her options are:
Herbal medicine that she chooses. Feels like she is making a difference in her disease. Maybe some side effects, but probably not so bad. 400 month, not so bad.
Or, a little XRT and chemo and surgery (again, probably should know the regiment for inflammatory ca). Cost is way more than 400/month (even the out of pocket part is probably higher than that) and has terrible side effects. She will get maybe a few months extra. Woo-hoo.
It seems like a lot of people turn to alt med because they can make decisions about their own health, feel like a participant in their prognosis rather than just on the conveyor belt from diagnosis, to therapy to death. When doctors understand that and have the time that alt practitioners do, the will find patients more responsive. This woman may care a lot more about process than prognosis (and she is right to, in this case because there ain’t nothing anyone can do for that prognosis).
medcurious
(Wednesday October 1,2003 - 6:56 pm)Wow, sometimes I feel like I’m reading “News of the Weird” when I read about these people that get treated here. I’ve never seen a woman described here walking on the street or anything.
In regards to alternative medicine, I’m totally not even into echinacea and the like.
However, I do think people turn to it when nothing else seems to work.
For example…one lady I know in her 50’s suffers from severe physical illness, and no modern medicine from hospitals or doctors can help her, so she tried to turn to the Asian remedy of “chi-gong” exercise. I mean, I think these people sometimes try to do this alternative medicine stuff as a last resort, not as a substitution.
I guess the Medfool’s opinion on alternative medicines, herbal remedies, etc. must be that if they really worked, they’d be prescribed by doctors in the hospital, right?