Learn My Friends

Today, I am in bashing mood. I am sure many of you would have received an email with the following:

Subject: FW: Shocking Cancer Information

"A good read!!!!!!!!   

Written by a doctor who suffers from cancer and he uses alternative rather than conventional medicine that involves chemo etc.

Good to share with family and friends."

The doctor starts off with a lashing about doctors and pharmaceutical companies involved in the conventional cancer business raking in billions, about chemotherapy and radiotherapy. These are nothing new and so I will skip.

Then he went on to explain what a tumor is and how he used Chinese herbs and acupuncture and how he cured himself of lung tumors. Well you maybe a doctor telling people for 15 years now but you should know as a doctor you are only ONE BLOODY single case. You cannot use ONE CASE to conclude that just because it was successful on you, it will be a successful for others. If you truly believe what you are doing is correct, why don't you follow Dr Max Gerson footsteps by publishing how many cancer cases that you have cured using your methods and documenting and supporting it by CT/MRI scan, etc. Dr Gerson published 50 cases. Just don't write an email and sent out. If alternative medicine is so good, why are people still dying after trying alternative medicine?

When I was attending the Iridology course in Ipoh earlier this month, my trainer was telling all the practitioners to start document the patients records. Not only the diagnosis, symptoms, what medication was given, to keep a copy of the radiology report and other medical reports to support that the patient has improved or recovered. This is to elevate the level of professionalism in alternative or complementary medicine practice.

People reading get carried away. Yes, alternative medicine does save lives (I believe much more than conventional because most cancer patients try alternative medicine after conventional medicine has failed) but not every time and not for every therapy. The trick is knowing which therapy is suitable for you. For those of you considering buying a book just because the patient has survived cancer, please beware. It's only ONE CASE from his or her own perspective. While it's good to read people's experience, I would think it would give people a sense of false hope to give the impression that it would work every time, though it may work for you. If that was so, we would only have ONE ALTERNATIVE  therapy, not the thousands that we are having now.

A visit to my doctor was short and sweet. He was pleased with the progress that I made from physiotherapy (I did not tell him about chirotherapy that I was doing too). He asked me to do some back/spine exercises and then gave me a prescription of Neurontin and Ultracet (if necessary only) for one month. If the pain slowly goes away, then I can stop going to see him. He also said I could go India but refrain from strenuous activities such as carrying heavy things, jumping and running. Maybe my stomach was full with all the frustrations. I did not take lunch today, the first time I ever did since my cancer journey.