Cancer can make us feel out of control. One day we are living and doing fine and planning for the future, the next day we are told we may have no future. We may lose everyone and everything we love. Our spouse, our children, our family, our friends. We may lose our job, our home, , all of the plans we had for the future. All at once we contemplate what we stand to lose. We try to be positive and to FIGHT (by the way, staying positive is not really always possible and has nothing to do with survival). We no longer feel in control of our life.
But one day we finish chemotherapy, our surgery is over and all of our therapies we were using to fight cancer are gone. I know the rest of the world thinks you’ll want to celebrate when you finish treatment, but I know I personally felt like I had just lost all of the tools I’d had to fight. If a cancer cell had survived it could grow and cause a recurrence and I would no longer be cancer free. Another thing made me feel out of control, they now never call cancer cured, we are all, even myself 16 years cancer free, just in remission. Kind of like we are supposed to be waiting as the cancer might recur again? We can never really say it’s over and move on if we are never cured (but I have).
Luckily I’m a medical professional, so base my choices on what is proven in research, but I think many are just looking for anything that might work to prevent their cancer from coming back, research based or not. I think cancer survivors just want a sense of control. Just this blog has gotten five spam comments (which I deleted) about some or another syrup that will cure everything from herpes to cancer. If you look up cancer diets online, you’ll find tons of pages, food you should eat, foods you shouldn’t eat, diets you need to follow. Sugar feeds cancer etc. etc. I know cancer patients who have sworn the use of raw diets, eating only raw fruits and vegetables will keep the cancer from coming back. I’ve been asked what changes I made to my diet…I MUST have to have survived signet ring so long! I tell people I never changed my diet at all. When I lost weight from my surgery, I ate lots of junk food and sweets to gain the weight back. I never stopped eating sweets or fast food or junk food, not that I eat a lot of it. I do believe it is good to eat more fruits and vegetables so,try to do that..sometimes.
There are three kinds of cancer treatments, traditional; the surgery, chemo and radiation. The complementary, things done in addition to traditional therapy, and alternative, things done in place of traditional therapy. If you wonder if a particular cancer therapy or treatment of miracle cure is really a good thing based on research, type the name into a search engine and add + NIH (National Institute of Health).
Traditional therapies are based on research in clinical trials that have shown effectiveness, Complementary therapies are those things you do along with traditional treatment. This may include meditation, Tai Chi, eating more fruits and vegetables. Alternative therapies have not been proven effective by research and are used in place of the traditional tested therapies. I did a 30 second internet search and came up with these alternative therapies:
10 Natural Cancer Treatments | Hidden Cures – DrAxe.com
- The Gerson Therapy and Juicing. …
- The Budwig Protocol. …
- Proteolytic Enzyme Therapy. …
- Vitamin C Chelation. …
- Frankincense Essential Oil Therapy. …
- Probiotic Foods and Supplements. …
- Sunshine and Vitamin D3. …
- Turmeric and Curcumin.
These are everywhere on the internet. Before you try any of these, be sure to type the name in a search engine followed by “NIH”. You will be able to find if research supports these therapies, if not, stay away! Even be careful with complementary therapies. I was rather depressed about my cancer and thought of taking an herbal remedy, St. John’s Wort. I read about it, and it turned out that if I had taken it, it would have interacted with my chemotherapy and made it 40% less effective.
So I know the need to feel in control, but be careful. You don’t want to cause yourself harm or even inconvenience doing something that doesn’t make a difference or could even jeopardize your chances of survival!