Lately I've been reading Carol Silverander's "With the Help of Our Friends from France"
http://www.amazon.com/With-Help-Our-Friends-France/dp/0976831619/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1337619327&sr=8-1
A little about Mrs Silverander. She was dxed with hormone positive early stage breast cancer and underwent chemotherapy and radiotherapy and lumpectomy around 1997 in her early fifties. Two years later, she started to suffer from nausea and went to have checked up for suspected hepatitis, but learned she has metastasis to liver instead. Thus began her 8 year journey with extensive innumerable liver mets, some about 2cmish. She also mentioned bone metastasis. During her treatment, she had xeloda (other chemotherapies), hormone treatments + herbal treatment (from a doctor in France, hence the title of her book). Both worked to stabilize her cancer, though as far as I can tell, she never achieved NED.
Here are the things that I feel might be a factor in her survival:
1. Mrs Silverander has a persistence that is remarkable and admirable (I conclude this because any person who writes a book after stage IV diagnosis is probably more persistent than me). Since her stage IV diagnosis, she made a number of life style changes:
a) She started 45 minutes/day treadmill exercise regimen + yoga. Given her persistent streak, I have no doubt she maintained this regimen
b) She has been vegetarian before, but turned to chicken/fish to supplement her protein
c) on advice of her french alternative doctor, she reduced her intake of dairy, which has been her staple previously. She also cut out/reduced sweets and soy intake.
d) She managed to reduce stress, on advice from her French doctor
2. Mrs Silverander travels extensively internationally. Why I consider this a factor in her survival, please refer to my previous posts.
3. Mrs Silverander takes a number of herbal therapies, including Iscador, all prescribed by her French alternative doctor. These prescriptions were listed at the end of her book.
4. Her cancer is hormone positive, probably Her2-, either luminal A or luminal B. Either way, tumor marker tests accurately reflected her cancer's progress. In that way, she gained a survival advantage because doctors (conventional and alternative) can better gauge her tumor's response and she herself can gauge the impact of her lifestyle changes. Another survivor, Ms Rich from my earlier posts also share this advantage.
5. Mrs Silverander also suffered from subclinical hypothyroidism concurrently with her breast cancer, till it was corrected with the help of her French alternative doctor. Hypothyroidism in women are often caused by autoimmune disease. It was not clear whether she had tests which would have diagnosed her as autoimmune.
Please refer back to my earlier post about "Red Devil" by Katherine Russel Rich, another long term survivor of stage IV breast cancer. I see a lot of similarities between the two women. They seem to have both ER+PR+ cancers, responded to megace (though both hated them), both dropped tamoxifen very early on for side effects. Some may be trivial others may not be.
http://killerboob.blogspot.com/2012/04/kathy-richs-red-devil-book.htm
No comments:
Post a Comment