Sanrith Descartes
You have insufficient privileges to reply here.
- 48,180
- 137,926
Cancer: a Philosophical Question
- Thread starter Sanrith Descartes
- Start date
- 1,095
- 1,515
My Mom's recent colonoscopy found a tumor, stage 4 colorectal cancer, subsequent scans found it had spread to her liver, but nothing in the lymph nodes and none of her other blood work or tests picked up on any of it. We just got done doing chemo for a month and a half, and her last treatment put her into afib and her heart stopped twice while she was in the hospital, but recovered on it's own. Doctor came in and basically told her the chemo will kill her before the cancer does and she's opted to go on hospice. We are looking into the Joe Tippens regimen, have literally had around a dozen people that we know recommend it or one of the antiparasitics, our neighbor behind us has been doing it for about 5 years now, drinking soursop tea, etc. for cancer they said would kill him in 6 months. Our local farmers market guy that sets up at the flea market here has been buying Ivermectin from Atwood's, self dosing 5cc's of it with orange juice in a shot glass every morning, and has lived 3 years with multiple cancers they said was going to kill him in 6 months. Part of me thinks doctors just don't have any clue how long it's going to take for some of this stuff to kill you, so it's always "you have 6 months to a year".
All that being said, just going through the process for the less than 6 months that we did, all the appointments, and watching my Mom literally degenerate over a month and a half doing chemo, all the stress, the expense, I decided I'm not going to do it unless it's something that can be done with a resounding success rate. Just that small amount of time and Mom has thousands and thousands of dollars of medical debt even with insurance. On the flip side, going through setting up hospice, getting a will made up, power of attorney, now looking at getting disability setup for her, it's all soul crushing. Will be looking into just getting this stuff done and out of the way, like
sleevedraw
recommends, so my daughter doesn't potentially have to go through the same nightmare.
All that being said, just going through the process for the less than 6 months that we did, all the appointments, and watching my Mom literally degenerate over a month and a half doing chemo, all the stress, the expense, I decided I'm not going to do it unless it's something that can be done with a resounding success rate. Just that small amount of time and Mom has thousands and thousands of dollars of medical debt even with insurance. On the flip side, going through setting up hospice, getting a will made up, power of attorney, now looking at getting disability setup for her, it's all soul crushing. Will be looking into just getting this stuff done and out of the way, like
sleevedraw
recommends, so my daughter doesn't potentially have to go through the same nightmare.- 3
- 1
Furry
Email Loading Please Wait
- 25,036
- 34,803
I've seen cancer treatments work very well, and I've seen them go horribly wrong. One of my gramps was advised by his doctor to just cut out his cancer and live as long as he could without treatment. Doctor said he'd 100% die from it, but at least he'd get a year or two to enjoy. He died drunk driving a couple years later, like a proper irish man.
I've also seen them go horribly wrong with family members. A year of chemo turning you into a zombie that barely understand where you are only for the cancer to immediately come back turbo mode and kill you 6 weeks after getting the all clear. Cancer sucks and medicine is a lot of guess work. I'd probably base my choice of treatment on how old I was. It's a tough situation you're in, but most people here would be willing to go through it to spend more time with family. Enjoy what you still can.
Captain Suave
Caesar si viveret, ad remum dareris.
- 5,870
- 10,058
Well yeah. All things considered, cancer is still very poorly understood both in positive and negative outcomes. Some people get spontaneously better, and others rapidly deteriorate and die despite the best medical technology we have. Everything is a game of statistics with wide distributions.
I'm hoping that AI is going to give us some breakthroughs before I get old enough to need them.
Kithani
Blackwing Lair Raider
- 1,590
- 2,158
This just really isn't true and Rhyan's post about turtle soup regimens just really shouldn't belong in the Grown-Up Forums, IMO. I mean sure there are anecdotal extreme outliers in either direction but those cases are so rare that they really aren't applicable to any individual person diagnosed with cancer.
It's very difficult to get the true history of his story (shocker) but from what can be gathered Joe Tippen went on a clinical trial for immunotherapy for SCLC, for which the 5 year survival is very low but not zero. Rather than attribute his survival to the... clinical trial he enrolled in... it is apparently because of Febendazole or whatever regimen he made up. Honestly if this stuff was magic it would be altered slightly and rebranded by pharma in an instant for $$$.
- 3
- 1
Izo
Tranny Chaser
- 20,899
- 27,691
moonarchia
The Scientific Shitlord
- 26,500
- 49,610
Captain Suave
Caesar si viveret, ad remum dareris.
- 5,870
- 10,058
I think we are agreeing with each other. Perhaps I didn't express myself clearly.
I was not intending to support the idea that a homeopathic fruitarian diet or some other bullshit will cure cancer. Current medical technology, including ratiation and chemo, is by far the best toolset we have. Doctors are genuinely trying to save their patients and if soursop tea actually worked they'd be shouting it from the rooftops.
What I was reacting to was the phrasing around the "maybe six months" diagnosis that implies an expectation that doctors should be able to reliably give precise and accurate timelines on life expectancy for cancer patients. That just isn't the case and doctors know this, so they say "six months, give or take" to give the patients anything at all. They're aware of the outliers and that's the reason for always speaking in ranges and uncertainty. My mom was given "six months" and held on (in misery) for another two years. That's not a failing of the doctors, it just reflects the imprecision of our knowledge at this point.
Last edited:
moonarchia
The Scientific Shitlord
- 26,500
- 49,610
Cancer prognosis follows the same path as weather forecasts. Or the magic 8-ball. It would be nicer if they could just compile the data for time of prognosis to time of death and just give you the average. "Could be tomorrow. Could be 20 years from now. This is the average."
Captain Suave
Caesar si viveret, ad remum dareris.
- 5,870
- 10,058
I think that depends on the numeracy of the patient. I'd love that presentation, but having sat in on several such conversations with family members most people's eyes glaze over and they say, "Just give me a number, doc."
Kithani
Blackwing Lair Raider
- 1,590
- 2,158
In my experience that is what is done, but as you might imagine this conversation is an extremely traumatic experience and I suspect when a lot of people hear “most people live around 6 months but some live shorter or longer than that” patients and their families come away with the message of “…6 months…”
Most cancer trials actually report more of the median survival than the mean anyway which is a subtle difference
- 1
Control
Silver Baronet of the Realm
- 4,531
- 12,511
Or they just ban alternative treatments instead, like with covid? As long as you're also taking whatever other treatments you need, is there any harm in popping a ivermectins and febendazoles along with it?
- 1,095
- 1,515
Honestly one of things that kills me is this is the one thing that finally got my Mom to quit smoking. I remember laying some heavy guilt trips on her when I was as young as 8 years old, and now here at the end is when she finally gives it up. I do think the bit of chemo helped with that, she said it was like it reset her system and she just didn't feel like she needed a cigarette any more.
- 1
- 1
Kithani
Blackwing Lair Raider
- 1,590
- 2,158
Chemotherapy is very strictly protocolized, so if you're taking a bunch of BS stuff with it and show up to clinic one day only to find out your blood counts are too low or your liver enzymes/kidney function is off, which Ivermectin is documented to do (Febendazole is not as well documented because it isn't a human medicine lmao), then there's no way of knowing if it's from the chemo or the wackadoo protocol you're taking at home. You then get your actual treatment delayed.
I think most of the harm though is from people delaying actual proven treatments to try these wackadoo regimens before showing back up to clinic with more advanced disease and worse symptoms. There's the financial harms too of buying up these scam therapies but I dunno if anyone can really put a price on (false) hope so that's a lot more grey area IMO.
- 2
Control
Silver Baronet of the Realm
- 4,531
- 12,511
Ah, if it interferes with the actual treatment, then that makes it more complicated. Costwise though, while I'm sure there's no shortage of people trying to drain the bank of desperate people, ivermectin/febendazole is about as cheap as meds can get, which unfortunately is part of the problem.
Kithani
Blackwing Lair Raider
- 1,590
- 2,158
Buying it in a back alley at your local flea market is probably cheap but there’s plenty of “expert clinics” in this country (I’m not going to post links) where they will range from charging you a small fortune to milking you for all you’re worth to get on their special protocol or whatever. I’ve seen people spend >50k in a month cash on “experimental” treatment in Mexico.
At the end of the day it just doesn't make any logical sense. The last true blockbuster drug in Oncology was probably Keytruda (and Opdivo) which you'll see on TV all the time. It had a new mechanism of action and has been effective in a wide variety of cancers and is even responsible for some of the "miracle" cases you'll occasionally see. Ironically, this is the exact fucking drug Mr Tippen was in a trial on and if you look at the data there was a small minorty of patients that seemed to have a miraculously sustained response to this drug even though the MEDIAN response only moved about 2 weeks. Keytruda is literally the best selling drug on planet Earth by total revenue. Think about that... of all the money big pharma makes, this single drug is THE HIGHEST PAYING drug they have. The idea that there is some other wonder-drug sitting out there in plain sight and Pharma just doesn't want you to know about it (instead of selling it to you) just doesn't pass the smell test on any basic level. All they would have to do is make a combined pill of Ivermectin/Febendazole and slap a new name "Iverbendazole" and they'd be off to the bank.
Now... maybe there is some secret trial going on that is going to do just that and if so I'll gladly come back and edit my post, eat some crow and celebrate with everyone, but I'm just not getting my hopes up.
Sanrith Descartes
You have insufficient privileges to reply here.
- 48,180
- 137,926
Sorry you are having to deal with it. It's really something that until you go through it first hand, you cant imagine the reality of having a loved one go through it beyond just the emotional aspect of impending loss.My Mom's recent colonoscopy found a tumor, stage 4 colorectal cancer, subsequent scans found it had spread to her liver, but nothing in the lymph nodes and none of her other blood work or tests picked up on any of it. We just got done doing chemo for a month and a half, and her last treatment put her into afib and her heart stopped twice while she was in the hospital, but recovered on it's own. Doctor came in and basically told her the chemo will kill her before the cancer does and she's opted to go on hospice. We are looking into the Joe Tippens regimen, have literally had around a dozen people that we know recommend it or one of the antiparasitics, our neighbor behind us has been doing it for about 5 years now, drinking soursop tea, etc. for cancer they said would kill him in 6 months. Our local farmers market guy that sets up at the flea market here has been buying Ivermectin from Atwood's, self dosing 5cc's of it with orange juice in a shot glass every morning, and has lived 3 years with multiple cancers they said was going to kill him in 6 months. Part of me thinks doctors just don't have any clue how long it's going to take for some of this stuff to kill you, so it's always "you have 6 months to a year".
All that being said, just going through the process for the less than 6 months that we did, all the appointments, and watching my Mom literally degenerate over a month and a half doing chemo, all the stress, the expense, I decided I'm not going to do it unless it's something that can be done with a resounding success rate. Just that small amount of time and Mom has thousands and thousands of dollars of medical debt even with insurance. On the flip side, going through setting up hospice, getting a will made up, power of attorney, now looking at getting disability setup for her, it's all soul crushing. Will be looking into just getting this stuff done and out of the way, like
- 2
- 3,357
- 6,363
So I just came across this thread. I've lived this fear twice:
My mom had a brain tumor removed that turned out to be the secondary mass from stage 4 lung cancer. She 100% earned it, she was literally smoking in the hospital the day before the brain tumor was removed. Saw it with my own eyes. When she found out it was lung cancer she said 'no reason to quit now' and puffed along. I watched an oncologist come in and tell my mother that with aggressive chemo and radiation she was looking at best a year , or weeks/months without. She didn't do chemo at all and only agreed to radiation because the tumor had messed with her vision and they told her it would help (she like most of us here loved to read). Then COVID Hit and she died the morning I could get a fucking flight back to CLT to see her.
In June 2023 I found out that 'surprise' I had a brain tumor as well. Mine was the kind you can walk away from though. I beat it (well all things look like I beat it) but one thing I recall from the day it made it existence known was confirming with the puny hospital we have here that they were NOT putting me on a helicopter. I did not want to do that to my wife financially. I also have a living will, DNR , etc. I agreed to chemo/radiation because it was minor and I could do the chemo at home.
I had the best outcome and it SUCKED. FUCK CANCER!
My mom had a brain tumor removed that turned out to be the secondary mass from stage 4 lung cancer. She 100% earned it, she was literally smoking in the hospital the day before the brain tumor was removed. Saw it with my own eyes. When she found out it was lung cancer she said 'no reason to quit now' and puffed along. I watched an oncologist come in and tell my mother that with aggressive chemo and radiation she was looking at best a year , or weeks/months without. She didn't do chemo at all and only agreed to radiation because the tumor had messed with her vision and they told her it would help (she like most of us here loved to read). Then COVID Hit and she died the morning I could get a fucking flight back to CLT to see her.
In June 2023 I found out that 'surprise' I had a brain tumor as well. Mine was the kind you can walk away from though. I beat it (well all things look like I beat it) but one thing I recall from the day it made it existence known was confirming with the puny hospital we have here that they were NOT putting me on a helicopter. I did not want to do that to my wife financially. I also have a living will, DNR , etc. I agreed to chemo/radiation because it was minor and I could do the chemo at home.
I had the best outcome and it SUCKED. FUCK CANCER!
- 4