Cancer, cancer, cancer. During this short 2 weeks, I've had to hold back tears in front of patients as they are forced to confront the gravity of their disease. I've also been there as patients received the "bad news" we all dread. I've been forced to reflect on the brevity of life, and how little time I may have to make an impact on those around me. It was inspiring how some of the cancer stage IV patients managed to stay positive while still accepting the severity of their disease. This rotation increased my respect for Oncologists even more. As they are constantly trying to teeter the line between palliative treatment to keep the patient comfortable vs. more aggressive treatment to leave a battle ground of cells in hopes of obliterating the cancer, while trying to manage side effects of the treatment. It sucks that poisoning the body is the best resort we have come up with so far, but there are many out there doing great work to make the treatment more tolerable.
I believe there's more progress to be done in regards to combining different modalities of treatment. Nutrition is an aspect that is not addressed nearly as much as it should be. We've excepted that preserved meats with nitrites and red meats can increase the risk of certain cancers, but it still isn't standard of practice to encourage a diet heavy in leafy green vegetables. Through a limited search, I've come across an article promoting decreased rate of breast cancer growth in mice given a diet consisting of 10% flax seed. Another article indicated greater erythropoesis when using a homogenized mixture of herbs along with doxorubcin led to higher neutrophil, erythrocyte, and leukocyte counts. These studies were done outside of the United States, as unfortunately I couldn't find any significant studies of alternative medicine in the U.S. Just an article comparing those who chose to do only alternative therapy vs. only chemotherapy, with chemotherapy leading to better outcomes. Hopefully more funding goes toward using alternative medicines in adjunct with chemotherapy.
