Cancer Patients Who Are Medically Sophisticated Generally Survive Longer
This article was written in May 2013 and originally posted on my Sina blog under the pen name Huaici Jushi; the original follows below:
An elderly lymphoma patient I have treated has survived for over eight years on Chinese herbs alone.
Before this year's Labor Day, the 78-year-old took a trip to Taiwan. After she returned, we spoke by phone; the trip had clearly been a joyful one, and she laughed heartily. I told her that, as an elderly cancer patient, she should take care of herself and not overdo it. The old lady spoke bluntly: "I'm already seventy-eight; if I don't enjoy myself now, I'll be in the coffin."
Since her cancer was discovered, this elderly woman has lived alone and cared for herself; she is not only strong-willed but has excellent self-care ability, which many cancer patients envy.
Objectively speaking, the reason this elderly woman achieved such successful treatment is tied to the fact that she herself is a Western-medicine specialist. Interestingly, though she graduated early from Peking University Health Science Center and is an influential Western-medicine specialist in China's occupational-disease field, once she herself developed cancer she rejected every Western treatment regimen—surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, targeted drugs, none of them—accepting pure TCM treatment entirely. I was only one of the people she consulted to write her prescriptions.
I have been treating her for nearly a year now. Over this year we have related as both teacher and friend; in her words, it is a friendship spanning generations combined with a doctor-patient relationship. But in my view, she has been my most important medical teacher this past year. Beyond books, a great deal of my medical knowledge I learned from her.
What I learned from her was not only Western-medicine knowledge but TCM knowledge as well. To my surprise, she can recite TCM acupuncture formula songs fluently; it turns out her grandfather was an acupuncture physician, and she was steeped in Chinese medicine from childhood. Having practiced clinically her whole life, she has treated many patients with combined Chinese and Western methods.
My long contact with this elderly woman has deeply moved me. In my view, the greatest factor in her long survival (barring accident, she will live to a great age, and cancer will not affect her much) is not the TCM doctors who treated her, myself included, but she herself.
The famous TCM master He Ren also survived for decades with cancer, passing away at the age of 81. Another famous TCM master, Pan Mingji, also lived with cancer for decades and died at 79. Among the patients I have encountered, many are long-term cancer survivors who have lived over five years. Some cancer patients with around ten-year survival have reached expert-level status; they know the Chinese and Western medical literature on their own cancer backward and forward, and it is precisely this knowledge that has carried them through one danger after another, achieving—though arduous—genuinely valuable success in the struggle against cancer.
The overwhelming majority of cancer patients who die quickly are characterized by a single word: "rushed." Lacking understanding of cancer, they crash about like headless flies, using every medical method at once. What I find most regrettable is an early-stage, well-differentiated (well-differentiated means the cancer cells resemble normal cells and are the least malignant among cancer cells) colorectal cancer patient I encountered who died nine months after surgery.
This was highly abnormal, because her probability of surviving five years or more was over ninety percent. Her treatment was typical overtreatment: because she could not let go of the cancer cells, she combined post-operative chemotherapy, radiotherapy, Chinese herbs, and certain quack remedies. By the end, even pain control was difficult; the strongest analgesics could not stop her pain.
By contrast, another mid-to-late-stage cancer patient I encountered, after being treated by the late famous TCM master Kong Sibo, survived nearly six years and died at the ripe age of 79.
On the Tianya forum I have seen cancer patients and family members whose medical knowledge would shame the average doctor. Their research into the relevant disease has reached an expert level. Precisely because of such rich medical knowledge, they are almost able to handle every danger the patient faces.
Many cancer patients do not die of the cancer itself but of the various complications it triggers, or of underlying diseases the patient already had. The survival and quality of life of this class of patients are directly tied to how much relevant medical knowledge the patient or family masters. Cancer is a chronic disease; with sufficient knowledge, one can maximize the patient's lifespan.
So after a cancer diagnosis, if one wants to survive, the most important thing is not to rely on the doctor but on the efforts of the patient and the patient's family. The anti-cancer journey after diagnosis can be quite long; no doctor can care for the patient over the long haul. Apart from the patient himself or her loved ones, who will closely watch every change in the patient? Broad, unbiased learning is far too important for a cancer patient.