When Chemotherapy Can No Longer Be Tolerated, Should You Force Yourself Through?

Patients on chemotherapy often beg me to take them on, because chemotherapy really has become unbearable; the side effects are severe, their bodies have developed all kinds of serious discomforts, and the doctors giving them the chemotherapy are helpless against those side effects.

To be honest, faced with such requests I am quite torn. Because when cancer patients undergo chemotherapy, most cannot avoid suffering, yet after many patients endure this hard period, the tumor can be brought under control. I have seen many patients whose chemotherapy was simply like living in purgatory, yet who, after pulling through, had quite long survival. For example, Guangpin Shanren of the Sina cancer-blog circle (we all called him the Principal) was an advanced gastric cancer patient; surgery and chemotherapy left him emaciated, but after enduring these ordeals he survived tenaciously. There was also a lung cancer sister in Shanghai nicknamed Yingzi, whose chemotherapy progressed to the point where all ten toenails rotted away, yet she also survived tenaciously. These patients have survived for more than ten years and are still alive; achieving such outcomes in cancer is no small thing.

So generally speaking, if chemotherapy has been assessed as effective and the side effects are merely relatively large, I usually persuade patients to persist, and I take responsibility for managing the side effects. Although not every patient's side effects can be resolved by Chinese medicine, it is fair to say that after adding Chinese medicine treatment, the side effects of chemotherapy can be relieved for most cancer patients. I once had a patient with advanced colorectal cancer whose chemotherapy side effects were so severe that even the doctor giving the treatment was frightened; the patient vomited violently and lost twenty to thirty jin in a short time, and the doctor did not dare continue the chemotherapy. But his chemotherapy was genuinely effective; after I gave him some Chinese herbs, this violent adverse reaction never recurred, and the patient completed his chemotherapy smoothly.

There are also patients for whom chemotherapy brings only side effects and no efficacy. In such cases I personally advise patients to abandon chemotherapy and choose other treatments. But in reality many patients and families, although knowing chemotherapy is ineffective and highly toxic, dare not give it up until death because of excessive faith in modern medicine. In the end, most of these patients did not die of cancer; they died of overtreatment.

Some family members are soft-hearted; when their loved ones suffer during treatment, the family cannot bear to watch and want to give up chemotherapy. The most typical are some mothers of children with neuroblastoma: their children's chemotherapy is effective but very painful, and a child is the flesh of a mother's body, so the situation tears their hearts apart and they often want to give up. Generally, when I encounter such family members, I soothe their emotions as much as I can and help their children manage the chemotherapy side effects.

Cancer really is hard to treat. Whether in Chinese or Western medicine, there is no shortage of treatment protocols for cancer, but among these few are truly effective. So once a protocol is effective, abandoning it is dangerous. Patients and families may think that doctors can surely find another new protocol that works for them, but doctors know full well how uncertain that is. When one protocol has already been proven definitely effective, few doctors would advise patients to abandon the proven-effective protocol in search of an uncertain one.

So, when chemotherapy side effects are severe, should you keep going? The answer depends on whether the chemotherapy is effective. If chemotherapy is assessed as effective, I personally advise against giving it up; you can seek help from Chinese medicine alongside chemotherapy, which can address the symptoms and relieve the side effects chemotherapy brings. If chemotherapy is assessed as ineffective, give it up decisively; patients who knowingly persist in ineffective chemotherapy are not acting rationally.

Can cancer be treated with integrated Chinese and Western medicine? Undoubtedly it can. Some Western doctors oppose patients using integrated Chinese-Western approaches for cancer; with all respect, this attitude is wrong. Doctors can hardly fathom the suffering patients endure; many patients on chemotherapy truly feel that living is worse than dying, and some simply abandon treatment because of it. What is wrong with letting these patients receive adjunctive Chinese medicine treatment?

Over the years, while researching how Chinese medicine fights cancer, I have also studied methods for Chinese medicine to support radiotherapy and chemotherapy. I have published many protocols for managing the side effects of radiotherapy and chemotherapy; these are protocols I have verified myself many times and published only after confirming they truly work. In practice I have deeply felt that adjunctive Chinese medicine treatment has truly benefited many patients, so I very much hope patients will have minds of their own and seek Chinese medicine's help during chemotherapy.