In order to be of maximum assistance to the patient, you should make every effort to learn as much as you can about all the factors that can influence their lives and their thinking. Whenever serious illness is involved, one must consider all the possible medical treatments. Therefore, the better you understand all the ramifications of medical treatments, the better you are able to discuss this with the patient, explain truths and dispel myths, and try to help guide and assist them.

There are two schools of thought on patient education. One is for the patient not to know, to care or to worry. Years ago, doctors and family refrained from telling a patient they had cancer. In 1970, Annette's sister was operated on and sewn up without removing anything. Several months later she died from breast cancer without ever having been told what her disease was. The family knew but never told her. As a matter of fact, in those days, the word "cancer" was never mentioned by many. In Neil Simon's play, "Brighton Beach Memoirs," he refers to "that disease" in a whisper.

The other school of thought is to explain every aspect of the disease and treatment so the patient can understand and become an active participant, not a passive recipient. Today, oncologists are taught this latter method. It is believed the greatest resource to cure a patient is within the patient. There is a saying, "Doctors do not cure cancer. Patients cure themselves with the help of their doctor." The immune system kills the cancer with the help of the treatments. 

There is an old tale with a great moral called the "wheelbarrow story." An individual carted scrap metal from machines in a plant to the junk pile hour after hour, day after day. The turnover in this position had been high, and the current employee was very slow and lethargic. The plant manager came to him one day and explained the entire process of producing their product and what an important place this individual had in continuously moving the scrap from the machine to the junk pile. He was an integral and vital cog in the entire operation. From that moment on, he did an outstanding job.

I believe the same thing applies in the recovery from cancer. If they can understand the part that they are able to perform, they can help themselves do an outstanding job in the successful treatment of their disease. It is for that reason that the following information on medical treatment is presented. It is so that you can understand what their options are, what their doctor is recommending, why it is being recommended, what it is intended to do and how it is supposed to do it. With you going over this information with them, it is hoped that their mind and their body will help the treatments do their intended job.

There are three types of treatments that must be considered in treating cancer. First are orthodox medical treatments (such as surgery, chemotherapy, radiation and the other treatments described later in Part II) of which I am completely in favor when prescribed by a qualified physician and concurred with by an independent qualified second opinion. Orthodox medical treatments always come first and foremost in treating cancer.

Second are termed supplemental (such as prayer, relaxation, imagery and diet). They are methods of treatment that are used in addition to orthodox medical treatments. I am completely in favor of any and all supplemental forms of treatment as long as their physician says they will not specifically harm the patient or interfere with whatever medical treatments they are taking.

Third are alternative therapies, methods of treatment used instead of orthodox medicine. These would include laetrile, pure macrobiotic diets, IAT, etc. I am totally and unequivocally opposed to any form of alternative treatments! Any alternative therapy that their physician says will not hurt and is done in addition to orthodox treatments becomes supplemental therapy.

Stay far, far away from alternative therapies because they can kill by denying access to the treatments that thousands of scientists have developed and perfected over the years. They must believe in and use every supplemental therapy that their physician says cannot hurt them. It is their life, and if they don't do everything possible to help themself, no one else will.

Sometimes you may hear a person describing a treatment as "unorthodox." In my opinion, that term should not be used. It merely indicates the person using it is unfamiliar with the treatment and is trying 
to discourage its use even though it might be helpful to the particular patient.

Fifty years ago, anyone being cured from cancer could only have been cured with surgery. Therefore, to relatively few surgeons, any method of treatment other than surgery, such as radiation, chemotherapy, relaxation or prayer is unorthodox. Oncologists know that this position is totally foolish. A few doctors with tunnel vision will call any treatment other than straight medical treatments unorthodox. This is only because they feel that they are imbued with all the knowledge in the world, and since they weren't taught this, it can't be good. My advice is to ignore the negative connotation of the word unorthodox whenever used. The idea is to get well, and if unorthodox methods can help, then after the patient is well they can try to figure out whether it was the orthodox or unorthodox treatments that did the most good.

The critical thing to differentiate between is alternative and supplemental treatments. Use your head and you will have no problem figuring out which is which. Everything recommended in this book is supplemental. It is in addition to whatever their qualified physician recommends.

Some people don't like the prospect of taking an unpleasant medical treatment. Perhaps some doctor told them there was nothing medically that could be done, and they failed to seek a second opinion. A human being will not be denied hope. They get oversold on a supplemental therapy, and use it to the exclusion of medical treatments. Then this supplemental therapy becomes an alternative therapy. It goes from something wonderful, something that can help save their life to something terrible, something that can most certainly cost them their life.

A mention must be made of spontaneous remission to let you know that it could be a factor, even though highly unlikely. This is where the patient, without any curative medical treatments, becomes completely cancer free for no explainable reason. Maybe it comes from prayer. Maybe it comes from visual imagery. No one knows where it comes from. It is my belief that someone who has a strong desire to live and does everything in their power is more apt to have a spontaneous remission.

There are hundreds of documented cases of spontaneous remission over the years. But out of the millions of cases of cancer, it is extremely rare. For someone to forsake medical treatments and expect spontaneous remission is like someone buying a $1.00 lottery ticket and quitting their job because they expect to win the $40,000,000 jackpot. 

There are numerous commonly used treatments for cancer, many of which could be successful if used individually, but often are proved more successful when used in combination. I personally had radiation therapy, chemotherapy, surgery, immunization therapy and a year of adjuvant chemotherapy in addition to psychotherapy. The cure rate for patients with advanced Hodgkin's disease was increased from 54% to 84% by giving alternating treatments with two four-drug combinations, demonstrating the complexities within a single type of therapy. Several of the more common medical treatments are discussed in Part II.

We have all heard war stories about various treatments for cancer and how horrible they are. I had 5 of the more common treatments. Prior to that, I was told I was terminal, that nothing could be done and that there was no hope. I lived for 5 days without hope. I want to go on record as stating that any single minute without hope is worse than all the treatments I went through!

These horror stories were probably true in your parents' or grandparents' time. Today, these treatments, when administered by qualified professionals, are scientific, not guess work. They know exactly how much of anything can be given safely to do exactly what is supposed to be done and probably what the side effects or residual effects will be. Newspapers write up and show pictures of horrible fatal car accidents but rarely mention the hundreds of daily fender benders. With cancer, we hear about those who had severe problems but rarely about the many who had minimal problems.

By far, the greatest progress in cancer treatments has been made in recent years. Over half of all cancers that a young doctor graduating from medical school only 20 years ago was taught were untreatable are today curable to some degree. At the annual review meeting of the National Cancer Advisory Board, Dr. Alan Rabson, director of the Division of Cancer Biology and Diagnosis, referring to scientific highlights and discoveries, stated, "It has been one of the most exciting years during my lifetime." Dr. Lloyd Old of Memorial Sloan-Kettering, one of the most respected cancer specialists in the U.S., recently said there had been more progress made in the cancer field in the last several months than in the previous 25 years he has been in research. Dr. Vincent T. DeVita, Jr., past director of the National Cancer Institute, states, "The pace at which science is moving is so exciting that the fear is not being able to keep up between the laboratory and the clinic."

People were burned with radiation therapy years ago. Today, this should not happen. In the past, some people were poisoned with drugs. My recollection is that in an article a few years ago in the Washington Post, the reporter was able to locate some 6 drug-related deaths nationally. They showed a picture of an infant superimposed over her death certificate stating this child was killed by drugs. What dramatic journalism! These 6 deaths were out of some 200,000 people who received chemotherapy that year. If you compare the risk to the reward, there is no comparison. In my opinion, that article, by frightening people away from the proper treatment, killed more people than drugs would for many, many years.

Some 35 years ago a radical mastectomy was the treatment of choice for breast cancer. Now it is rarely an option. Relatively no one should die from testicular cancer today. Many say the greatest advances have been made in childhood cancers.

Be grateful that dedicated doctors and scientists discovered the treatments and perfected them so today's patients are able to receive the benefits of them. Only a few years ago this was not possible. Because many people died previously, maybe your patient has a chance of beating cancer. Have them do everything their qualified doctor recommends to help save their life.

Sometimes it is difficult to convince the patient that they are recovering when they feel absolutely rotten. It is hard to be optimistic when they feel worse now than at the time of diagnosis. The schedule of radiation or drug treatments may seem endless. They are convinced that there never was a day when they did not feel awful; there never will be one when they will feel normal, if only they could remember how normal feels. Some even interpret these physical reactions to treatments as signs that the cancer is returning. This is rarely the case although it will be necessary to be reminded of this over and over.

You can try to change their depression to optimism by explaining that the name of the game is not to 
take treatments. It is to beat cancer. If the treatments are making their big body feel so rotten, think of what they are doing to those weak, little cancer cells. 

Articles in local publications or local media announcing gigantic breakthroughs in cancer should be viewed with skepticism and not allowed to raise false hopes or doubts. Generally, these can be checked out easily by calling 1-800-4-CANCER, the Cancer Information Service at the National Cancer Institute. Major break-throughs, if publicly announced, would be important enough to make all the major wire services. You would hear about them on all the radio and TV news programs as well as in newspapers and magazines.

The following is from an article in Good Housekeeping, by Dr. Alan E. Nourse about what you can do to avoid being taken in by cancer quackery.

"First, I think it is important to recognize what really is being done by modern medical science, slow as the progress may appear. Researchers are piecing together an immensely complicated puzzle, and progress is slow precisely because the puzzle is so intricate. To discover why a normal cell goes wrong and how to stop the process, we have to understand some of the most basic processes of life itself. But bit by bit the answers are coming in.

"Second, we should bear in mind that even though a 'magic bullet' against cancer may not be found, more and more kinds of cancer are being cured, and the list of known, effective treatments is lengthening.

"Third, knowing what we do about the dedication and integrity of most medical scientists, we should be suspicious of anyone who claims that researchers are deliberately hiding valid cancer cures from the public.

"But most important of all, we should use some plain good judgment. When you hear about a new cancer remedy that sounds simple and easy and that you can handle largely by yourself, recognize it for what it is. If is sounds too good to be true, it almost certainly isn't true."

Chapter 6, Considering the prognosis