My advice and experience with cancer..

First off as a Disclaimer. I am in no way advocating people not seeking professional medical help. Nor am I saying that people shouldn’t try things like Chemotheropy and more minor surgeries, but after watching my mother slowly die of Melinoma, I think I learned something that everyone dealing with cancer should know..

The doctors will almost never tell you when you should give up on medicines and procedures that screw up quality of life and just focus on enjoying the time you have left..

Depending on what kind of cancer and where it is, once it has spread internally (moms was skin cancer). There will come a point where there is a surgery that if it works COULD give you 10 more years, but if it doesn’t WILL ruin the last couple years you have.

I DO NOT THINK DOCTORS ARE HONEST ABOUT THIS... I think they want the patient to maintain hope . So they will keep providing options That overstate the success rate vs. quality of life question.

I think from the dr.’s pov any chance is worth taking. Ten years is better than 2, so they think it is worth the shot...

not to mention more procedures makes them more money..


To elaborate some..

My mother had melonoma. It started as a malignant mole . So they cut it off..

Then the mole case back. So they cut it off again..

Then it moved to the lymphnobes. So they cut them out..

Then it moved to her liver.. so they decided to do a big deal surgery to remove them.


At this point she had 2 possibilities...

1) they might be able to burn off up to 5 spots of cancer..

2) if the tumors were isolated to half the liver they could remove the bad half..

3) if there were more than 5 tumors and they were on both sides of the liver. They could do nothing but sew her back up.


Well #3 happened.. so they just had to sew her back up..

After the surgey failed it was all down hill.

They say that once cancer is exposed to air during a failed surgery the cancer explodes.. however I personally think it is that the body cannot heal the damage from the surgery AND fight the cancer..

So the body focuses on the immediate threat of the surgery damage and allows the cancer to go crazy..

I suspect that the final surgery was a really long shot off the muscle..

I bet my mother traded 2 years of “normal life” for only a 15-20% sucessrate and Instead only got 8 months of horribleness... healing from being gutted like a fish AND then on top of that cancer too..

I don’t think the DR. Communicated that choice well..at all...

I think he just kept providing other options, when she should have just enjoyed the time she had left..



That is just something I think everyone should know.

a reply to: JoshuaCox

You are more than likely right, everything is connected and stress from illness and then surgery is really hard on the body.

They say that once cancer is exposed to air during a failed surgery the cancer explodes.. however I personally think it is that the body cannot heal the damage from the surgery AND fight the cancer..

And money is always a great and bad motivator. I strongly feel medicine should be non profit, but that isn't going to effect the Dr.s wallet. The Dr, would still do the same job just the way the medical system is structured would change.

a reply to: JoshuaCox

Thanks for sharing this. So sorry to hear about your struggle and that of your mother. We just lost a neighbor friend who was diagnosed with stage 4 stomach cancer and given 3 to 6 months to live. That was December of 2016. We helped as best we could and are still helping the neighbor's wife.

Chemo treatments did, obviously, extend his life more than 6 months, but the quality of life was awful the last 4 months or so. Very sad to watch. Odd thing was, the VA, which was his primary care facility, forced him to do the Chemo regimine, telling him alternative treatments couldn't, per the rules, be offered up until he had completed the Chemo followed by a course of radiation treatments.

FWIW, my wife who worked in the medical field confirms that cancer, once exposed to atmospheric oxygen does explode. I guess thats true.

Where I live, its pretty much a retirement area. Mostly, everyone's just waiting for the word that they got their cancer. When I get mine, I'm going to Mexico, assuming that option isn't outlawed by this crappy government.

Sorry for your loss, and thanks.

a reply to: JoshuaCox

Well for further light on the situation had y'all known that cannabis oil has a near 100% success rate curing skin cancer you could have skipped all that. I have never seen anyone not cure their deep dark fast growing melanoma. Oil on the spot under a bandaid. Change every few days. Takes 3 to 18 months normally. What jerks at my tear chains here is my friend Karen was about to go get the treatment your mom did. Luckily she listened to me and is now just another cured cancer patient friend to me. Info = Light. Namaste. www.youtube.com...

a reply to: JoshuaCox

My mom had colon cancer and fought off and on for 10 years. She slowly withered away until a stroke finally killed her.
Radiation wasn't bad at all.
Chemo is nothing but an evil bastard.
She died in 2007.

My dad had a rare type of blood disease similar to leukemia. The doctors wanted to do chemo and after watching his wife go through it he said f that.

He lived with that for many years and he died in 2016 after pneumonia damaged his heart.

I will say until the day I die that chemo probably lengthened her life but his was a more quality life.

She died at 72,
He was 83,
If they were in their 40s, maybe chemo would be easier to fight but in your 60s and 70s I'm not so sure.

I did baking soda once on my ear malanoma

and on my hand Silver did the trick

yea lost my dad 8 years after the Rocky Flats plume in Arvada....Sept. 11 .....1957 we were 2 miles or closer

a reply to: JoshuaCox

Sorry to hear about your mom, and I think you offer good advice in trying to make sure the time left is Quality, and not just quantity.

a reply to: JoshuaCox

Unfortunately my old study is outdated "Here" I also do not update it like my 100,000 year cycle Upgrade thread as ATS became an attacking site

Thanks to modern medicine, a lot of us are going to be faced with the choice of living a longer, marginal life, or a shorter, possibly more meaningful life. Medical science certainly tends to over-sell their goods, even if you don't think there's a huge conspiracy to keep you alive longer to drain your savings.

We know for sure that no matter what medical science can do, it's only going to be temporary. The gods didn't do us any favors. We're going to die. We're programmed to die so the next generation with their stronger immune systems can get the resources. It's a tough choice. We know we're going to die, but we don't want to do it right now. And we don't want to suffer.

No wonder people drink and get high.

i learned recently something very intresting about healingabilities and .. chemicals.

how he describes ricksiompson oil. i had similar effects and going on with ketamin. how he describes the working with ricksimpsonoil is very intresting for people who wonna understand this.

a reply to: seasonal

That’s called socialized medicine..

You remove the insurance companies and hospital stockholders , and only pay the drs ,nurses and other functional jobs.

Right now All those decisions are ONLY bottom line mathematics and with an insurance company middleman, we never hear the cost/benefit analysts..

If the Dr. told my mother the surgery would cost 200k (even if she isn’t paying it) and only has a 15% chance..


I don’t think she takes the surgery.. maybe she still does though.. no one knows till faces with that kinda question..

a reply to: TonyS

I often wonder if in cases where the chemo is only gonna prolong things, if it is really good...

I understand blasting it pre surgery to shrink and weaken it before removal, but I wonder if chemo doesn’t usually just prolong the suffering..

Hypothetically instead of you being perfectly normal for a year, then having a fast decline the last 2 months because the rate the tumor is growing. I think ALOT of times with chemo you live for 2 years, but spend that time sick from radiation. Then have a brutally prolonged end as the tumor oh so slowly grows and kills you..


I hope that is coherent lol

a reply to: IanJacklin

That’s ridiculous.....


We looked into CBD stuff. I smoke.

There is no silver bullet. Cancer isn’t a virus or bacteria.. it is different and unless we improve our immune system is here to stay.

a reply to: JoshuaCox

Socialized medicine or another system that many other countries maybe the way to go to get the profit hounds out of this.
I have been touched with 2 deaths in my family from lung cancer with parents who smoked for 40+ years. It was sad and heart breaking, and like Blue Shift said, dr.s can keep you alive but are you living?

After watching Hospice (true angels on earth) do what they did for both parents, I would not want to die like that. Even though Hospice is and was a God sent-no thank you. I watched things that should not be done for a couple of horrible months of "life". And in the end both died from starvation/dehydration, maybe the heavy morphine that ended up being from a pump.

a reply to: seasonal

And at that point thank god for heavy morphine..

Gives you a whole new opinion of assisted suicide..

a reply to: JoshuaCox

As I sat for the final 2-3 weeks with my mom, she did not regain true consciousness. After I had time to reflect I wondered why we would force a person to go through this, I would not allow the family pet to do the Hospice route, I would have the vet give them a $30 shot-or the old yeller route.

If I end up in that situation I would want a more direct route to the end, not the bed sores and bed baths.

a reply to: seasonal

Definitely a brutal experience to see..

Having lost both my parents to cancer I'm really glad you wrote this thread. There is so much truth to what you say and it's really hard to gauge the point where hope gets in the way of getting the most from the time they have left. I know my own choices will be different from those of my parents, they suffered far too much needlessly. It's a hard way to learn a valuable lesson but time is all we have and I'd rather have a week of great days than 10 years of misery on and off.

Thanks for sharing about your mother.
Not easy but if it helps just one person you've done a great thing.

Our current cancer treatments in the western world are nothing but laughable... and if you rely on them to save you then you will most likely die a slow painful death.

a reply to: JoshuaCox

First of all sorry about ya Mum .. but ya talking bollocks .. the is plenty of cures for cancer .. loads of threads on ats .. do a bit of reading it mite help next time one of ya loved ones get cancer