Medical Adultery
Friday, June 25, 2010 at 9:01AM | by Otter Mom’s oncologist is an amazing doctor. He’s compassionate, informative, listens to the patient, and takes a lot of time to help us feel we understand the options for her treatment.
He’s also got one real tool in his bag: chemotherapy.
He’s in no rush to treat mom. His judgment is that she’s undernourished, weak, struggling just to do her daily exercises, to keep down her food. He knows we are fighting her nausea, a preexisting thyroid problem, her pain, the stubborn refusal of her body to work the way it’s supposed to.
My sister, brother and I have done as much research as we can. In our search for a diet mom can use we turned up a world-famous doctor who hasn’t exactly displeased the world of medicine, one who accepts that medicine and nutrition and the natural energies within us needn’t fight against one another but can cooperate.
We decided to give her a try, and scheduled an expensive meeting with her.
I was on my guard. My son’s autism has exposed me to a greater-than-average share of quackery and hostile-to-double-blind-study doctors who cram the patient into a preexisting diagnosis, dogs of one trick who chelate or snuff out glutin because, hey, it worked before.
This was different.
We talked about chemistry, enzymes, amino acids. We answered questions, and the doctor listened patiently without that smug, knowing nod that says “Ah, just as I thought,” before she had even met the patient.
She was frank about the realities: that chemotherapy might be the best option, but that her goal, as she saw it, was to help mom grow stronger and healthier so we could do what we judged best. She offered no alternatives to chemo, though she spoke of “experimental” and “unconfirmed” claims that she was intrigued by.
What impressed me most was her sense that the body is a system, that the choke-points addressed by traditional medicine can be misleading. Without despising the way the medical industry and science treat the body, she wanted to move in a different direction, recostoring as much as possible the body’s natural balances. She didn’t despise any drugs we’d been given, but suggested small changes in dosage and carrier systems (which turned out to work brilliantly). She gave us advice about what might be out of balance in mom’s body chemistry.
And so my major question was, “How will your way of rebalancing and redressing the body’s deficiencies conflict with our oncologist’s?”
She answered, “It shouldn’t, at all.”
The oncologist thought otherwise.
His pleasant face clouded over a bit when he looked at the things that the Other Doctor wanted to know, refused point-blank to order some of the tests she wanted.
We had committed medical adultery.
Well, that was awkward.
Mom is growing stronger. She’s putting a tremendous amount of her faith in medicine that is not really unproven, just not proven to kill cancer. That’s never what we asked for or claimed, never sought to avoid the brutal premise of chemotherapy, that the best way to defeat cancer is to fill the body with poison and let it cook in it until the fast-growing cells concede that it’s better to die than to live.
Nobody has said that’s not the best option.
But she’s getting stronger by tiny increments which my sister logs meticulously hour by hour, and we know (because we are careful to remove variables where we can) that it’s because we have accepted guidance to look into the body’s normalcy and abnormal workings.
No size fits all.
We see mom getting stronger.
We really don’t know if or when we will start chemotherapy, committing mom to the very symptoms that we’ve sought so hard to avoid.
There is no pain like this: deciding which path to walk knowing that all paths lead to death, but choosing the route.
And I want to make clear I have no grudge against traditional medicine: its tools are powerful, its people generally good, its science meticulous on behalf of the human race. Traditional medicine saved my daughter’s life from a brutal staph infection when she was small. It saved mom’s life just a few months ago.
It seems more than ever to me though that there are many in medicine (and I hope not to include our oncologist in this number) who make me wonder: “Why do you want to save life? I’m not sure you even believe in life.” When the oncologist tells me that he is in no rush to treat mom, I am not sure whether this is despair or compassion.
The Other Doctor smiles when I tell her this, and says, “Death is not the enemy. Not living is the enemy.”
Alternative Medicine, Cancer, Chemotherapy, Medicine in Cancer 
Reader Comments (3)
Glad to hear she is feeling somewhat better. She is in my prayers. Oh,and I totally agree with the Other Doctor.
My grandpa had terminal cancer. I wish he had been open to other ways to heal & live for the time he had left than chemotherapy that did prolong his life by a few months, but made *all* of the months he had left miserable.
Quality of life is hard to measure, but it is the real goal, when dealing with living life, IMNSHO. It's a hard balance to navigate, but it sounds to me like you and your family are really striving to do so, and more importantly doing it pretty well. I am sorry your are having to do so, however and I wish I could wave a magic wand and "fix" everything. :hug:
There is no pain like this: deciding which path to walk knowing that all paths lead to death, but choosing the route.
yes.