My Prostate Cancer: A Review and Update March 2007
Hi Guys,
How about I give you an overview and update on my present situation and anti-cancer regimen?
Well, I have just complete the update and because of its length will have to break it up into two separate posts for easier reading. Sorry about that. Hope find it informative.
Perhaps I should start from the beginning, for those readers who are first timers’s and haven’t had time to search back into my blog.
2003 – 2006. Experienced intermittent periods of Frank Haematuria, (blood in urine) say, every six weeks or so. To find the cause I had a Cystoscopy/retrograde Pyelogram in August 2003 and again in December 2005, with different Urologists performing. Both results proved negative with no explanation found. My own contention that the cause was possibly down to my pre-existing (1995) benign prostate enlargement, (being agitated by sitting for long periods at the computer or driving long distances) was discounted by my second Urologist, though he later acknowledged the probability, as there was no other cause in evidence.
Having had a large benign growth on my Thyroid 1992; lost my right kidney to cancer in 1995, a Cholestiatoma (benign growth) in my left ear in 1989 and again in 2000, and having had melanoma and carcinoma skin cancers, it had long been intimated that I was to be considered a high risk for more cancer issues.
Diagnosis: May 2006.
Prostate cancer: Gleason grade 9. Stage T1, PSA score 7.30
Cancer identified as aggressive with a high probability of metastasis having started. Bone scan did not confirm metastasis but a scan is unlikely to identify early microscopic spread.
Prognosis:
Excluding radical prostatectomy, because of the likelihood of the cancer cells having started to metastisise already, my available options were given as:
Brachytherapy: High or low dose radiation by way of seeds or radioactive substances inserted into the prostate gland.
Hormone Therapy: Taking drugs to minimize the effect of testosterone in the belief that it can stop or slow the growth of the cancer.
Watchful Waiting: Having no treatment but to hold fast and monitor the growth.
Although I was fully aware of several experimental procedures producing good results in Australia, I was reluctant to pursue them as the jury is still out and I was never in the business of being experimented upon.
Not wanting to rush into making a rash decision on the options available to me and, being already half convinced that I would take the watchful waiting method anyway, I put it off for several weeks.
The delay allowed me to review the research I had done over the previous year or so and, more importantly, discuss all the options thoroughly with my dear wife, ensuring that any decision would be well considered, and made together. I would add here that being able to openly and candidly discuss my situation with my wife and to have her sincere and loving input, actually took one hell of a weight off my shoulders. Without her support and input I may well have taken the easy route, as do many others in this situation, and put my faith, and my life, in the hands of strangers within the white coat brigade. Instead, I unflinchingly took control of my own health and wellbeing and couldn’t be happier about it. We agreed that we did not wish to be part of the dehumanizing and mechanistic tendencies of institutionalized decision making.
I do feel I was being a little unfair to my Urologist here as I was quite sure of the direction I would be taking and probably should have said so. However, knowing of the disdain some in the medical profession have for natural medicine, in all its forms, I just didn’t think it worth pursuing with him.
Such disdain, I suggest, being two-fold. Firstly, there is the Drug and Pharmaceutical Industry pressure on government health bodies and through them, the medical profession itself, to ignore and reject any supplement, natural health product, or proven healing method that they did not originate, or is sponsored by them. And secondly, it is because of the medical profession’s inability to grasp, because of their lack of training in this area, the historically proven value and benefits to be had from natural medicine. Keep in mind that where a drug company is unable to synthesize a natural element from nature, it totally rejects it, because, yes, you guessed it, it has nothing to patent so has nothing to sell. It is not about your health or mine – just money!
Did you know, for instance, that in the United States the pharmaceutical industry spends in excess of US$4 Billion dollars each year marketing their drugs within the USA, and another US$16 Billion marketing them to the medical profession? Further, they spend 2.5 times as much on administration and marketing as they do on research. So what does that tell us?
What I proposed, and with the full support and blessing of my wife, was not simply to ‘watch and wait’ but to be pro-active in my own, self-treatment. My wife would develop a well regulated anti-cancer diet for me and I would start a comprehensive, holistic therapy regimen. The intention being not only to kill off my cancer cells using nature itself by way of herbal medicines; vitamin supplements, naturopathy and homeopathy and whatever else I could find, but to shore up my own immune system, to 100% efficiency.
This decision was not taken lightly. It took many, many, hours of diligent researching on the internet, the reading on much material and numerous books on the subject, as well as discussions with family and friends, before I was able to confirm my direction.
You gotta dance like nobody’s watching,
dream like you will live forever,
live like you’re going to die tomorrow and
love like it’s never going to hurt.
- Meme Grifsters
To be continued in the next post…
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