A Leap Of Faith

I have not been able to fall asleep the whole of last week as my mind could not calm down. Always thinking... So most times, I only managed to sleep past 2am and have been missing a few qi gong classes to catch up some sleep. I will need more beauty sleep during daytime to catch up.

If what all my doctors say are true, then I am living on borrowed time. But it is my believe that I can change my destiny (will write about this in subsequent post), at least not submit my mind passively to the idea that the end is near thereby creating a self fulfilling prophecy.

To Do Or Not Do ? - Part 2
This time round, my brother Jon and eldest sister Mary came along. They had wanted to come and hear but I have warned them that they may not be able to handle what they hear. The last time my sister in law (brother's wife) came along, she was in tears. Such discussion with the doctors are frank and direct.

The 5th urologist stated by saying to make things clear, THERE IS NO CURE! Then he went on to say about patient leading quality of life which by that he meant for cases like mine, 6 months life is the max but if I take the drug Sutent, I could possible extend my life to 10 month. 4 months extension of 6 months is actually very good because life is precious. When I asked about the survival rate, he said ALL patients died. His best was the patient lived for 10 months. But doc, I am already living 13 months now and not on any conventional medicine. He explained that this could be due to the tumors growing slowly and there is no guarantee it will continue to stay that way. He did not acknowledge my alternative medicine treatement and instead gave me a lecture about clinical trials and how I am throwing my good money into the river.

Medically, there is only two conditions where he can consider surgery to remove the kidney. The first is that I am willing to go on the Sutent target therapy and the second is that for pallative reasons. Since I am currently showing no signs of any pain, he asked me why on earth would you want to touch it?

Not all news were bad though. I have three good news to share too. The doctor said that for all his years (20+) of experience, he had never seen the liver been invaded by the tumor because there is a fat layer that separates the liver. The second good news is that physical examination of my tumor mass, he said that my tumor is still movable, meaning it is still operable. Well the third is my consolation for he said the biggest tumor he ever removed was 25cm (mine was 15cm and still got room...).

I can tell that both my sister and brother was very sad and my sister was nearly in tears. I know my brother was interested in me doing the Sutent target therapy. After the consultation outside the doctor's room, I told my brother, if you had sent me to the Sutent therapy, I would not be taking to you now because their best record was 10 months. I have now lived longer than that.

My Therapies
I can tell you the most difficult when starting an alternative therapy is what therapy to take? There are hundreds of them out there, each claiming some successes and all have the followers. Since my doctors has no cure for me, my starting point was alternative medicine and a search on Google revealed millions of entries. Sigh...

Thanks to my sister and my ex colleague, Janice, I was given two books to read and it became clear that my immune system is my only best bet in beating this diease. So at the base of my understanding is that all the therapies I chose will be in compliance with this objective, strengthening the immune system. In addition, the therapy should be as complete as possible rather than best of the breed, meaning you do no do bit and pieces of each therapy. Granted what works for one may not be for another. Still some therapies have better outcomes and much more well documented.

If you have been following my blog for a while, you will know that I am taking a number of therapies together. They are all complimentary to each other and support the base objective. I follow them as complete as possible. My believe is that too many cooks spoil the soup, so I limit my therapies too.

Allways remember this: You most likely get only once chance to try! So make the best out of it and choose carefully!!!