This may seem totally whacked to you, but I'm going to ask anyhow.

People who get cancer normally go through chemo, radiation, etc.

When a person is finally deemed untreatable, while continuing these practices, they end up with complications caused by the drugs prescribed to them and have heart attacks ... and other malfunctions.

My question is: If a person had cancer and didn't do anything about it... would the cancer run its course and die off, leaving the patient normal again?

I know this is a bit off the wall... but I'm truly wondering.

I did an interview for class last semester about a guy whoose wife had cancer about ten years ago but she decided not to go through chemo and she's still alive. If I remember, I don't think she had to go through anything to get rid ot it.

I appreciate your question, Tree. I have wondered the same thing.

I have several friends who have survived breast cancer. All went through the chemo and/or radiation treatment. Several other friends and relatives have survived prostate cancer and all have gone through the treatment.

However, there are other cancers, such as pancreatic cancer or cancer of the liver where chemo/radiation only serves to empty the bank account and make the patient suffer more and the end comes as predicted. But then you hear testamonies of persons who have gone to alternative health care centers and survived those very cancers. Whether they combined chemo/radiation with the alternative methods, I don't know.

I have often wondered what I would do if faced with such a choice. I think it would depend a lot on the type and prognosis of the cancer diagnosed.

P.S. I think that healthy bodies are probably dealing with and killing off cancer cells constantly. However, once a cancer gets a foothold, I don't think you should count on it running its course and going away by itself.

DD

My mom had breast cancer this past summer i think and now it is possible in her lungs and maybe liver we don't know for sure yet awaiting results on her tests as i type...hopefully its nothing but, i hope she does well and picks the right way to handle this..

I'm really sorry to hear this Sammy. My Mom had breast cancer too. She finally died of a series of heart attacks which were caused by the medications she was taking.

I often wonder why there is so much more cancer nowadays than before. Maybe there were just as many cases before, but not as many were treated.

I don't know.

Thoughts on Cancer
Cancer of course is best treated by excising the cancer before it spreads and that is how one can be cured of cancer. We usually determine that if there is no cancer that can be found in a person after 5 years that they are “Cured”. I have seen metastatic breast cancer return 19 years after her initial treatment. I think it may have been another breast cancer that was not big enough to be found or maybe it just did jump on her after so many years of being dormant. People that have one cancer tend to get another. I have had only two people that I can consider to have been cured of Cancer of the Lung and both of those were kind of like John Wayne. An incidental finding leading to surgery and excised before it spread.
There are certain cancers that have been found to respond better to chemotherapy agents better than others. Most of the time if a cancer is found to have metastasized at the time of discovery, it will lead to death. Can life be prolonged with treatment? I think yes in prostate cancer and in breast cancer, but in lung and pancreas probably not.
What happens with cancer if it is untreated? I have seen very large breast cancers where the cancer eroded through the skin making a perfect mess for the patient, but the patient refused surgery. This one went on to die in a few years. Would surgery and irradiation and chemo prolonged life in this patient. Won’t ever know.
Are alternative therapies like the big Laetrile thing of any help? NO they just help empty the pocket book, but if they give the patient a realm of hope then so be it and it may be worth the expense and trouble for the hope it brings. At least the treatment is not worse than the disease. Laetrile and doing nothing are the same thing, but if a patient gets better with nothing we say God did it, if they get better with Laetrile we say Laetrile did it, but God did them both.
So, what do doctors do when they get cancer? They do what the patients do. Stop being a doctor and be a patient. There was a story in the Reader’s Digest some years back by a Thoracic surgeon that saw his chest x-ray and made is own diagnosis of Cancer of the Lung. He had the surgery, the irradiation and the chemotherapy. When all had been done and a two years later when he was dying they asked him if he had it to do over would he do anything different? He said yes. I would have the surgery and the irradiation, but not the chemotherapy. The surgery and the irradiation were not too bad, but the chemo made sick during the few days I had left and I would have preferred to feel better so I would not take the chemotherapy.
Are there cases where people get better when they do nothing for Cancer? Of course I’m sure there are some. I had a 28y/o man with cancer of the colon that was locally invasive when he had his initial surgery and later had recurrence causing small bowel obstruction for which I operated on him again a year after his first surgery. He didn’t have any metastases to the liver. I advised him to take disability but he refused. He said “I want to work”. I lost him to follow up, but to this day, I don’t know how long he lived. He had no chemo. He should have died in 2 years but in 5 years he was alive and working and then I don’t know.
I have seen patients with little cancers of the colon like a polyp die from metastasis despite all types of treatment. I have seen patients with very large locally invasive cancers that one would think should be gone in a year, but they just continued to survive. That is why I would operate on patients that looked they were beyond curing. We should do what we can without risking the life of the patient, because we can’t really predict the ultimate outcome. No one can predict the future. We should cure sometimes, relieve often and comfort always.
We in medicine give out information determined by statistics obtained from historical reviews, but I hate statistics, because I always think I am in the group that dies.

scapel, thank you for your post. It was an interesting read.

I agree...very interesting post.

If one doctor proclaims that an illness is serious, if there is time, such an ill person should get a second opinion. At least, one of the doctor's should be in a setting in which he/she is up on the latest techniques, success rates, etc. and the performing surgeon should have ample experience in the correct surgical area. Even then, one does what one does and should not blame the doctor for any type of failure unless there is obvious negligence, which is a lot rarer than thought by patients who have undergone so much stress, etc. After surgery, one may also benefit from any available support group. Way before surgery, there are cancer help lines where often successful patients are eager to offer practical advice and referrals.

quote:

Originally posted by tsaeb:
If one doctor proclaims that an illness is serious, if there is time, such an ill person should get a second opinion. At least, one of the doctor's should be in a setting in which he/she is up on the latest techniques, success rates, etc. and the performing surgeon should have ample experience in the correct surgical area. Even then, one does what one does and should not blame the doctor for any type of failure unless there is obvious negligence, which is a lot rarer than thought by patients who have undergone so much stress, etc. After surgery, one may also benefit from any available support group. Way before surgery, there are cancer help lines where often successful patients are eager to offer practical advice and referrals.

Very well said.

"...run its course and die off" That is called Remission, or spontaneous remission. A thing that is hoped for, but seldom actually takes place.

Cancers are, in broad terms, mutated cells that grow at an exceptional rate - usually they take over healthy "normal cells" either killing those off, or pushing them to the side or causing the normal cells to turn cancerous.

Prior to chemotherapies and radiation therapies mortality rates for cancers were very high, nearly 100% - since the advent of therapies many cancers are pushed into remission. Its called remission a cure requires a very long period of no cancer growth before it is called - like years of time - further many cancer patients relapse.

Chemo and radiation treatments can, and often do cause a remission. The cards are stacked in the patients favor more with these treatments than without treatments.

And in some cases the use of chemo/radiation is not to save the live but to extend the life by slowing down the rate of growth of the cancer.

My dentist had prostate cancer in his 50's and decided against conventional treatment which would likely have left him impotent, he said. He used alternative 'health' therapy: organically grown food, no animal products, daily exercise, 'mood' therapy (think happy thoughts)and so forth. He's still going strong ten years later.

But if he had had surgery then, he'd probably be going strong now - the cancer was found at an early stage. He knows that, but he's still happy with the choice he made.

So personality is a factor. A person should be positive about whatever treatment he/she chooses. Quality, not quantity of life is what matters - within reason, of course.