Some Suggestions on Treating Cervical Cancer
Lately I have seen so many cervical cancer patients that I cannot answer everyone's inquiries individually. I therefore write an article on cervical cancer treatment, hoping it may help cervical cancer patients.
Among cancers, cervical cancer is relatively speaking not the most fearsome; most cervical cancer patients have a fairly favorable survival, and the cure rate is quite high. Surgery and radiotherapy are Western medicine's two most important means. After surgery for early cervical cancer, about nine in ten patients can expect cure. Middle and late-stage patients have lost the surgical opportunity, so Western medicine mostly chooses radiotherapy, sometimes combined with chemotherapy.
The hidden danger of radiotherapy for cervical cancer patients is radiation enteritis. Perhaps because the group that comes to me is unusual, nearly every cervical cancer patient I have seen has developed radiation enteritis after radiotherapy. Once radiation enteritis appears, it lingers and is hard to heal, and the patient's quality of life is very low; the patient spends a long time in severe pain and difficult defecation.
I believe that once a patient chooses radiotherapy, they should promptly prevent radiation enteritis, using TCM approaches such as nourishing yin and clearing heat, and supplementing the middle and boosting qi.
TCM treatment of cervical cancer should combine internal and external medicine. For early cervical cancer, the external use of the patent medicine Sanpin Yiqiang (Three Grades One Spear) is very effective; reportedly, the former Jiangxi Provincial Maternity and Child Health Hospital commonly used it for early cervical cancer with a 100% effective rate. But because Sanpin Yiqiang contains large amounts of highly toxic substances prohibited by the pharmacopoeia, most hospitals now dare not use it lightly. In fact, although this external medicine is highly toxic, it is not fearsome. That doctors and hospitals, to avoid responsibility, keep their distance from risky treatments is truly regrettable.
The patent medicine Sanpin Yiqiang is a famous formula from the Ming physician Chen Shigong's Waike Zhengzong (Orthodox External Medicine), composed of four herbs: Fanming (alum), Pishi (arsenolite), Xionghuang (realgar), and Ruxiang (frankincense). Preparation: first calcine alum and arsenolite red-hot, then grind into fine powder; add realgar and frankincense; mix and roll into medicine sticks; dry in the shade for external use. It is indicated for hemorrhoids, anal fistula, goiters and tumors, ding sores, back abscess, and brain carbuncle. It has the action of removing rot and drawing out fistulas.
Clinically it suits many external-treatable tumors. One spear means rolling the medicine into sticks and inserting them into the sore opening. For cervical cancer, it is inserted through the vagina into the lesion; the drug removes necrotic flesh, causing the tumor to decay and detach.
External treatment has an irreplaceable role in cervical cancer; both early and middle-late patients may consider it, and the effect is rapid.
Below is the Sanpin Yiqiang prescription:
Fanming (alum) 2 liang, Bai Pi (white arsenic) 1.5 liang, Xionghuang (realgar) 2.4 qian, Ruxiang (frankincense) 1.2 qian.
Preparation (the following is the original text from Waike Zhengzong on making Sanpin Yiqiang): Grind the two herbs arsenic and alum together into powder, put into a small jar, and calcine over charcoal fire until red; when the blue smoke has ended and white smoke begins, after a moment when the whole mass is red throughout, remove from the fire. Let the jar rest on the ground overnight; take out about 1 liang of clean arsenic-alum powder, add the above 2.4 qian realgar and 1.2 qian frankincense, and grind all together extremely fine. Mix with thick paste to a thick consistency, roll into thread-like sticks, and dry in the shade. For the above conditions (various sores and ulcers) that have an opening, insert into the opening; where there is no opening, first pick an opening with a needle. Insert the medicine twice daily, morning and evening. After three days of insertion, large openings may receive more than ten sticks each time; after seven days, stop when the opening is filled with medicine sticks. Thereafter the affected area naturally splits open on all sides; around the fourteenth day, the ding core, scrofula, and hemorrhoid-fistula tracts naturally fall off. Then wash with decoction and apply Yuhong Gao (Shengji Yuhong Gao, available as a patent medicine); for deficient patients, additionally take spleen-strengthening medicines.
Cervical cancer patients, especially middle-late stage, often bleed. If bleeding occurs, the patient should be careful not to strain at stool, and not to over-exert herself in daily tasks, or the bleeding will worsen. At such times hemostatic treatment should be given promptly.
Because patients' constitutions differ greatly, the specific TCM decoction approach also differs widely, so I will not give herbal decoction prescriptions here, to avoid some patients mechanically copying formulas and abusing them, which could worsen their condition.