Medical Blog 92237

Most people who come to see us are generally desperate and lost. They do not know what else to do. Some of them have never had any experience with cancer before. So they are unsure of what to do: to go for surgery, chemotherapy or radiotherapy? Yet many others are told point blank that there is no more treatment available for them or there is nothing that can be done. In simple language it means to go home and wait to die. They receive a good supply of painkillers or morphine to tide them against the pains. There are also the more experienced patients. They know what these treatments are about, for they have gone through them all. Apparently they have been well and thought that they have been fully cured. Then cancer strikes again. They come to seek other avenues for help. Whatever category you are in, we have the following advice for you: Go for healing!

1) Never say die and never give up. As long as you are still breathing, know that there is still hope even when you are told that you have no more hope. Hang on to your hope and believe that you still have hope. Some people may accuse us of trying to give people false hope. It is cruel to raise false hopes. But on the other hand, some doctors tell you that: You only have three to six months to live. There is no medicine, no cure. Just prepare to die. Some patients are told to enroll themselves with the palliative care centres for further management (and you know the reason why!). Do you not think such insensitive comments or actions are even more cruel?

We have written many books with stories about false hopelessness. Goh had colon cancer that had spread to the liver. He could hardly walk and his stomach was bloated. He was told to go home and prepare to die. He was in the hospital for two months and was put on morphine only. The doctors on ward rounds even refused to see him. Yet this no hope patient recovered and became much healthier than he was before he had cancer and lived for another two years plus.

Two-month old baby Carisa had Stage 4 neuroblastoma and was given three months to live. At the time of this writing, Baby Carisa is now more than 7 years old and is still alive.

Melisa was ill with cervical cancer that had spread to the liver and lungs. She was asked to write her will as the doctor concluded that she only had three to six months to live. She lived another three years before complications arose from her radiotherapy treatment (before taking herbs). The unbelievable and amazing thing about this case is that her thirty spots in her liver have all disappeared.

Raju had bone cancer of an unknown origin. He was unable to move and had to sleep sitting up on a deck chair. The doctor gave him six months to live. After two months on herbs, he came back alive and was able to visit India twice. He is very much alive now, and drives around. Indeed, if at all there is one message that this article is meant to convey, it is HOPE!

We are fully aware that during distressed moments, cancer patients become very gullible and will grab at any straw that promises the slightest chance of hope for living. We have heard of salespersons calling on your home, even in the middle of the night, offering magic potions with a promise of cure. The mother of a boy who had cancer told us of one salesman who would ring her four to five times a day to keep tabs on how the son was doing. And each time the phone rang, it was with the advice to take more and more of the capsules he was selling. So the son ended up taking sixty capsules of the product a day, besides another dozen of other supplements. Use your discretion and be cautious.

From the point of view of science and medicine, hope and feelings do not count or exist. These attributes do not belong to the physical body for they do not show up on the X-ray film or CT scan. Therefore they are not supposed to exist. Yet, you and I know that there are things such as hope, love, feeling and inspiration. These are attributes of the soul and mind. They do exist and they matter -- irrespective of what Rene Descartes wanted you to believe or what the medical world says. The feeling of no hope kills. So, we say again that there is no such thing as false hope. But there is such a thing as false hopelessness because no mortal on earth can play God.

When the terminally ill patients come to us we used to tell them this: Dont worry. All of us have to die someday. It is a matter of when -- tomorrow, next month or the next ten years. But, let me tell you that you need not die yet, just because you have terminal cancer. We may be younger than you and do not have any cancer but we may even die earlier than you. So dont worry so much. Death is not an issue here. What matters now and the future is that while you are still alive you do not have to suffer. Let us pray that we can help you lead a normal, pain-free life. When the time comes and you have to go home, let us pray that you die peacefully

Petrea King of Quest for Life Foundation, Australia said: Life is not a competition about how long we survive. Its about the quality with which we live.

This is what Cancer Care Therapy is all about. We see healing at various levels: physical, mental and spiritual. We may not be able to cure the physical body but we may be able to touch and heal the mind and the soul.

2) Empower yourself. Knowledge is power goes a saying and I truly believe this is true. So, I advise you to read and ask questions. Seek knowledge so that you understand your illness. Research has shown that those who feel hopeless, helpless and accept their fate lying down survive poorly. We tell cancer patients to stand up and live! Do not just be contented to remain at the bottom of the pile with the following mentality: My doctor says this and my doctor says that. You will then end up following everything that he says. We are not asking you to defy your doctors instructions but we also know that you may be led by the nose without having a clue of what is going on. It may not always be good for you.

Let us look at the case of Melisa again. She had approximately thirty spots of varying sizes scattered all over her liver. The oncologist recommended that she went for liver surgery. Melisa asked the oncologist: How are you going to dig out all the spots in my liver? Of course this question irritated the learned doctor, but saved Melisas life! The question may sound stupid but it carries a lot of sense. In the absence of a satisfactory answer, Melisa declined the surgery. And she was absolutely right.

Guat had breast cancer. When she was asked to go for chemotherapy or radiotherapy after her mastectomy, she asked the surgeon: Can these cure me? Can you guarantee that? The doctor was dumbfounded; there was no guarantee. That being the case, Guat declined further medical treatments. To her, if that is what it will all come to, then she preferred to die in peace without the agony of the side effects of the medical treatments.

3) Re-evaluate your strategy. Use your gut feelings and common sense. Body-mind healers advocate the use of intuition or the sixth sense when making important decisions in life. Nott all decisions made based on scientific data are wise or correct in many of lifes situations. Statistics and data can be deceptive, cold, dead and insensitive to human feelings. For example, ask yourself if the treatment that you are undergoing benefiting you or killing you? Of course, when you go for any invasive treatment, your hope is always to achieve a cure. Ask your doctor if there is such a thing as a cure for your condition. Some patients are given chemotherapy just for palliative reasons, not cure. Will the treatment make your life better or just more bearable?

Dr. Jeffry Tobias (in Cancer) wrote: one important decision .... to stop, (know) when to say no more. Indeed it is wise to know when to withdraw and to say enough is enough, if and when the treatment is spinning you in a circle. There was one lung cancer patient who came and told us that his oncologist spent only half a minute with him every time he went for his chemotherapy. Our advice to him was: Find another oncologist who can be more caring and who could give you more of his time and expertise. How much can a half-a-minute doctor help you? Can you expect such a busy-no-time doctor to save your life? Evaluate my comments and make your own decisions about all these issues. Sometimes what it takes is only common sense to save your life.

4)Make wise decisions. Gurdjieff said: The wise man is not educated and the educated man is not wise. These are words of wisdom. To enable you to make wise decisions, you need to be aware of the following:

a) Do not make decisions based on or out of fear.

b) Seek more information, from different sources and viewpoints, if possible, before you make any important decision.

c) Weigh out the options, both pros and cons. Do not simply see the good side of things only. Take into account the worst possible outcome as well.

d) Connect with your inner self. Seek out your intuition, common sense or gut feelings. Take time to be alone, to be silent. Relax and let the inner voice within you speak to you. If you are too busy or preoccupied with others, you cannot hear your own inner voice.

e) Arrive at a decision that you can live with. It is your body, it is your liver or your breast that is to be removed or operated upon. Ask yourself if you can live with that decision. It is your life that is at stake. Doctors and other people can only help but you are the one who suffers the brunt of whatever is done to you.

f) Once a decision is made, stay on course. Then, re-evaluate your strategy if it harms you.

5) Trust and flow. Dr. Joseph Murphy (in The Power of Your Subconscious Mind) said: According to your belief, it is done unto you. The causes of failures in healing are mental coercion, lack of confidence, doubt and hesitation. All these reflect negative attitudes. If you come with the main goal of going all out for a cure, chances are that you will fail to get one. In your intense desire to cure yourself, you can become very tense and may not have peace of mind. Have you ever experienced a time when you are trying very hard to crack and solve a problem? Your mind comes to a dead end. Try to take it easy. Relax and go to sleep. When you wake up the next morning, things will look easier and you will get to solve your problem in no time. This is because the subconscious mind does not respond to mental coercion.

6) Forgive and let go. Negative thoughts such as hurtful memories, bitterness, hatred, anger, etc., beget negative reactions and they block the free flow of life. Let your life be expressed in terms of love, forgiveness, sharing, caring, harmony, peace, beauty and abundance. By loving and forgiving yourself and others you let go of your negative emotions and this is the first necessary ingredient of healing.

// posted by medical37025 @ 2:33 AM