Experience Treating Leukemia with a Delaying Strategy Combining Chinese and Western Medicine

Part of the case record of a leukemia patient I discuss in this article has already been published; for the detailed treatment plan, please see my article "A Case of TCM Treatment of a Leukemia Patient", so I will not repeat it here. In this article I mainly want to discuss her treatment strategy.

This elderly patient was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia (AML-M4E0) at the end of 2019. After diagnosis, she came directly to me for TCM treatment without any Western medical therapy. Her husband had previously suffered from lung cancer; after Western treatment his quality of life was dreadful, and at his terminal stage, at the invitation of his daughter, I had provided hospice care for that lung-cancer patient, with some effect. So the family trusted me greatly and wanted me to set the treatment plan.

The overall strategy I set was a delaying strategy combining Chinese and Western medicine. The general principle was: do not forgo treatment, but do not be too aggressive either; as long as the herbal medicine works, prolong the interval between chemotherapy sessions as much as possible. The patient was over seventy, so pursuing a cure was unrealistic; we set the treatment goals at prolonging life and improving quality of life. If, after taking the herbs, the patient's clinical symptoms improved and her blood counts stayed reasonably stable, we would not rush to chemotherapy. If, while taking the herbs, the disease progressed rapidly and the herbs could not control it, we would give one or two chemotherapy cycles, then return to the herbs. We did not follow a tight, standard chemotherapy schedule; instead, we tried to stretch the interval between the two chemotherapies as long as possible.

The patient's children approved of this strategy, so she began with herbs. After taking them her symptoms rapidly relieved and her blood counts held up reasonably well. But this effect lasted only a few months; after a few months her counts dropped quickly, she felt hot and restless, and the herbs could no longer control things. So she had two chemotherapy cycles, and throughout the chemotherapy she kept taking herbs to improve her appetite and maintain her blood counts. During chemotherapy she developed a severe pulmonary infection with persistent fever for many days; antipyretics in Western medicine failed. I advised her to use an herbal tea made from Gouteng (Uncaria) and Bohe (Mentha), which resolved the pulmonary infection.

The patient herself strongly disliked chemotherapy, so she accepted it only when unavoidable. After chemotherapy, treating her with herbs markedly raised her platelet count and relieved her clinical symptoms. The family checked her blood count regularly and used the results to decide the next step. If the herbs could control the downward trend of her counts, they would postpone chemotherapy; if they could not, she would have one or two chemotherapy cycles and then be discharged, dragging things out this way—sometimes going months to half a year without chemotherapy.

Under this delaying strategy, the patient's quality of life has remained good, and still is today. Fellow patients admitted at the same time included those on standard chemotherapy and those who underwent transplant; aside from this patient, all the others admitted at the same time have since died. Compared with patients on standard chemotherapy or transplant, this patient's outcome was clearly better.

I believe the success of this strategy lies in the fact that, by prolonging the chemotherapy interval with herbs, the patient's cancer cells evolved more slowly than in patients on standard chemotherapy, so resistance developed less easily. Moreover, the side effects of herbal treatment were clearly smaller than those of chemotherapy, and the damage to the patient's body was less severe.

Yet relying on herbs alone would clearly not have achieved this result. When the disease progressed quickly, chemotherapy bought the patient the opportunity for TCM treatment. So this kind of combined Chinese-Western treatment outperforms TCM alone, and also outperforms Western medicine alone.

When I treated another patient with advanced lymphoma, I adopted the same strategy; that patient has now survived more than four years and is doing well. This shows that such a combined Chinese-Western delaying strategy is worth trying, and it also has a clear cost advantage: both patients spent far less than comparable patients under this strategy.

Whenever I have the chance in the future, I will apply this delaying strategy to more patients, prolonging their lives as much as possible.