A long term survivor on bcmets.org pointed me to this German paper which goes into Iscador in detail. I am not convinced that Iscador is effective in prolonging life. But there is a surprise hidden in table 4. Their data suggests that patients with certain psychosomatic traits (self-regulation) enjoys prolonged survival (several years vs 1 year for control group).
http://www.iscador.com/Content/ContentTrakker/Articles/1cf0ade6-8722-4693-ac81-20306f0baa35/3_32.pdf
So I went to look up the 16-question questionaire they used to determine "self-regulation" score. Stephanie pointed me to this 106 questionaire instead:
https://secure.localweb.com/attitudefactor/SRItest.html
I tried taking the test but the software has some kind of error that won't take my submitted form. The questionaire seems to be measuring independence, assertiveness, life-purpose, resourcefulness in taking care of self. I'm almost certain that Kathy Rich and Carol Silverander (the 2 long term survivers) probably got "self-regulation" in spades...
Their stories are reviewed here:
http://killerboob.blogspot.com/2012/05/carol-silverander-long-term-survivors.html
So congratulations to all the patients who exercise 45 minutes/day through bone pain/nausea, minimize their stresses, and control their urges to reach for cookie/cheese/red meat jars. You may well live longer because of your persistence and forbearance.
However, I'm going to not be so positive in the following paragraph. So if you wants to be positive all the time, you need not keep reading here:
several years are better than several months. But not enough. The goal is the cure, that MBC patients live decades to the normal life span, not years, not months, not days. It is beyond cruel to condemn a young mom with metastatic breast cancer to several months, or years for that matter, just because she has sweet tooth, has nicotine habit, has no time to exercise or a stressful life.
Till there is a cure, every breast cancer patient is a stage IV.
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