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Strephon’s Big Medical Decision Cancer

Issues – cancer treatments … lung cancer survival … bad survival statistics … making life and death decisions … choice … experts … core thinking ….

I think from the last meeting with the cancer specialist she showed a bit of despair. I was to take a little time to decide my options, and she would answer any questions by emails. But please decide fairly soon, or the scans I took are not useful, says she. I think she felt she lost me. I was thinking too clearly and the weight of her arguments were only so strong? Besides, she had more than enough cancer patients. They ones I saw looks sickly already, except an ex tennis buddy of mine who was always friendly on court.

Stefania and I will go over the notes from the doctor’s meeting tomorrow. Research today on some informative sites recommended by my blog people seem to paint a pretty negative picture.

Here’s some of what I got today.

Survival Statistics

Stage 1a    —more than 60 months (> 5 years)
Stage 1b    —about 36 months (3 years)
Stage 2a    —about 24 months (2 years)
Stage 2b    —about 20 months (< 2 years)
Stage 3a    —about 15 months (< 1.5 years)
Stage 3b    —about 12 months (1 year)
Stage 4    —about 8 months (< 1 year)

Recent findings indicate that 5-year survival rates approach 85% among patients who are younger than 30 years of age and have surgically removable lung cancers (Mizushima et al., Cancer 85:1730-33, April 1999).

What do these mean to me?

I am 75, not 30. The doctor says my cancer is at:

Stage 3a    —about 15 months (< 1.5 years)
Stage 3b    —about 12 months (1 year)

That’s not living very long. Even with treatment it will take a while to recover, if I do.
—

BBC Interview Excerpt with a lung cancer specialist.

ROBINSON
What about the survival rates for people who have the cancer now?

SECKL
They really are fairly appalling, about 10% alive at three years and less than 5% at five years.
—

This is BBC interviewing a cancer specialist. My Netherlands doctor told me more than once the survival rate for lung cancer with treatment is 15% after five years. Here in England it is 5% after five years with treatment. Without treatment? The doctor specialist said they did not keep statistics.

Strephon’s Conclusion

While I might like to choose otherwise, what is realistically on offer for me is NO SURVIVAL RATE.

I AM ALREADY LIVING ON BORROWED TIME, APPARENTLY!!!

So, what decision is there to make?

From Dr S, she expects that I might take this tiny window of hope.

From my perspective, this is gambling. There is no window of hope, no 50-50 survival rate at least, which is chance.

So, as of now, I see no point to take further tests or treatments because I have the worst type of cancer.

My picture for myself is, hey, I seem to be alive now with a strong cough sometimes. I could go at any time. Yet, yet, what I do now is like, hey, I can do anything and it is better than the doctors offer me.

The choice is not to live on. That door is not open to me directly. I am a dying man. So as a dying man, why not live as a living man?

CORE THINKING

If you understand your experience as saying this is an Ordered Universe running on interactive laws and principles that create wholes, then you are likely, as I am, to say also that no matter what the circumstances you, I, will strive always to make reasoned and reality-oriented decisions.

Core Thinking is what I call organizing ones impressions of life according to the same interacting principles as the universe itself seems sustained on. These principles internalized are called logic and are produced by the brain’s thinking processes, with other dynamics often part of this process, such as sensory input and intuitions, core perceptions of the way a thing is.

Of course grounding this process in everyday decisions can be overwhelming, frightening, and beyond one’s capacity.

Hey, what if in making my life and death decisions I simply don’t have the brain power to figure things out logically and realistically? What if I screw myself up?

In talking with Dr S for over two hours now about my cancer diagnosis and treatment, she presented her experience of treating lung cancer and my options in a logical and compassionate way.

Yet, I must not project onto her expert status as a thinker, though she may be one.

I, the non-expert in this area of lung cancer decision-making, have to figure out how logical the doctor’s thinking is.

Is the survival rate after five years really 15% and not 5% as I have read from other cancer specialists on the web?

Did the good doctor present me a neutral case? Did she present both sides equally, for and against treatments such as surgery, radiation and chemo?

No, she did not know the survival rates for 75 year-olds. Nor did she know the survival rates for people my age who refused the invasive treatments? Nor did she know where those 15% survivors after five years could be found so that I could talk to some.

Seems to me her bias is towards what she does and knows best, which is to treat serious lung cancer patients with the standard procedures available now.

So, once again I am having to focus in on myself and my life condition, and my choices.

What alternatives do I have?

I have not found a great deal except become vegetarian to change the body PH to alkaline and give up all meat. I have not eaten meat now for 2.5 months, not long, but a shift that could well affect my body.

Let us see now ….

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