Living with Cancer Under TCM Treatment Is Not the Same as Doing Nothing About the Cancer
Some people often misunderstand "living with cancer" as doing nothing about the cancer, and this way of thinking is wrong. For the patient, if the tumor does not grow or spread, that already counts as meaningful treatment; if it can slowly shrink, the meaning is even greater. Even if the patient's tumor is still growing, but the rate of growth is slowing, the patient's quality of life has improved, cancer complications are brought under control, and survival time is extended, then this treatment is equally meaningful.
Treatment that lets a patient live with cancer and doing nothing about the cancer are two entirely different things. When a tumor has progressed to a certain stage, seeking a cure is unrealistic; I believe most patients and their families who have repeatedly undergone futile surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy understand this deeply. For many patients, even standard aggressive cytotoxic treatments can hardly extinguish the rampant momentum of cancer growth and spread, and the cancer always relapses again and again. In this situation, continuing to try cytotoxic treatment is not rational.
There was once a patient with pancreatic cancer. Less than nine months after surgery to remove the pancreas and other tissues, the cancer metastasized to the bladder; less than half a year after a second surgery to remove the bladder, the cancer metastasized again. After that, she sought TCM treatment from the late Dr. Gao in Beijing. Three years later she was as healthy as an ordinary person, and she no longer bothered to fight the cancer.
After being diagnosed with cancer, the primary goal is to stay alive, not to kill the cancer. "Living with cancer" treatment is precisely rooted in this goal: it adopts an active treatment plan that ensures the patient's survival has quality and that survival time can be extended.
TCM treatment for living with cancer, while adopting root-supporting (fuzheng) therapy to preserve the patient's life and ensure quality of life, also uses some anti-cancer Chinese medicines that act relatively slowly to suppress the cancer day after day. Some toxic anti-cancer Chinese medicines do indeed harm the body, but as long as one is careful with the method of use and allows the patient intervals between doses for organs such as the liver and kidneys to self-repair, toxin accumulation leading to liver or kidney failure can be avoided.
The large body of controlled clinical data accumulated by the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences shows that cancer patients treated with integrated Chinese-Western medicine or with pure TCM have significantly prolonged survival and markedly improved quality of life. Some traditional TCM anti-cancer drugs are also being developed by modern pharmaceutical companies into anti-cancer drugs used by both Chinese and Western medicine. Examples include Sophora Flavescens Injection (Kushen Zhusheye), Compound Mylabris Capsule (Fufang Banmao Jiaonang), Zedoary Turmeric Oil (Ezhu You), and Java Brucea Fruit Oil (Yadanzi You) — all of these are active components purified from Chinese medicines that are effective against cancer.
This can also explain why some cancer patients who abandon cytotoxic treatment and turn to pure TCM treatment survive for as long as ten, twenty years or more. Everyone must die sooner or later; whether or not one has cancer, death comes in the end. If treatment can postpone death, then such treatment cannot be said to be meaningless or to do nothing.