Thursday, January 19, 2006

Velcade round two and thoughts on those herbs

Received my second shot of velcade today. Once again fairly uneventful, except for the following: white count is down to 2.4 today--from 3.8 on Monday. Neutrophils also dropped. Nurse says its due to the velcade most likely. Could it be due to not taking the herbs? no one can answer that and I'll comment more on that later. I did have a discussion with one of the nurses about my returning to the office for a few hours each day this week. She was a bit upset, and reminded once again that stressful environments for patients with myeloma are "toxic". I assured her I was trying to stay away from the stress, such as not interacting with clients or opposing lawyers and only going in for a few hours. She generally is not in favor of my return to the law firm environment. I, on the other hand, feel I need to do something on those days when I have more energy and hope that I can stay out of the fray when i go into the office. We'll see how it goes.--While I had pretty good energy this week, today I am quite tired, and in fact when I got home from the clinic had to take a nap. Not much threat of reestablishing a law practice with this kind of work ethic!

And now about those herbs. First, please understand that I love my doctor and think very highly of him and his knowledge and experience in the treatment of multiple myeloma (MM). While I can appreciate those of you who endorse more traditional medicine, I must say that my experience these past months, at least with this disease,makes me feel like a guinea pig. THe treatments have really not made much progress against the disease, but they certainly have hit me hard in other ways--such as wiping out my immune system and putting a strain on my kidneys. When I came down with the "crud", i.e., RSV, the baby virus, I got angry, as I know that I got that because of my compromised immune system, which is a direct result of my chemo. There have been times when I have certainly felt that the cure was going to get me before the disease did. I now understand the comments made by a couple of my doctors, that you have to be strong to survive this disease. What they meant is you have to be strong enough to endure the treatment regimes.

We all know that our bodies can heal themselves--witness the broken bones that have mended and the gaping flesh wounds that have healed. The same process can occur within my blood stream. Admittedly the herbal treatments don't have a lot of scientfic backup, but I blame the medical establishment for much of that. Linus Pauling is a great example. For those who are not familiar with him, he was a chemist, who won two nobel prizes--one for chemistry and one for peace. He did much research on megadoses of Vit. C as a treatment for cancer. He documented his results, presented it to numerous clinics, hospitals and med schools, and generally met with rejection and often ridicule. Having read a couple of his books, I believe he has legitimate scientific backup for his conclusions, but the medical community just doesn't want to believe it. (I did talk to my doctor about megadosing Vit. C, and although he did not discount its potential to help me, he thought it would be too hard on my kidneys--which are hit by my MM--but then so did most of the chemo he gave me.) I use this as an example and admit that most herbs don't have the scientific backup. That being said, there are MM survivors who have rejected traditional treatment and beaten the disease--my friend who referred me to the herbalist as well as another who wrote a book about his naturalisitic approach--"Medical Mutiny". The other problem is that most herbal approaches are taken only as a last resort--when all else has failed. One wonders what the results would be if it were a treatment of first resort. I started trying to figure out what nutrition could do for me in this struggle about 2 1/2 months ago and became very frustrated. For every wholistic approach, there was a harsh critic from the medical community and vice versa. I wish they would work more closely together instead of trying to trump one another. Simplistically, I feel that since my immune system is currently incapable of eradicating this cancer, herbs that can enhance my immune system function might present the possibility of increasing my body's ability to fight the cancer.

So, how do I answer my dilemna? I have decided to forgo the herbs for the first velcade cycle (2 weeks) to see what my numbers are while solely on velcade. Depending on the results, I may, or may not, restart the herbs. I will tell my doctor what I am doing. I am going to continue to take one of the products, which is a pulverized rice grain powder, as it really isn't an herb, but made from a natural food source. So, thanks for all the input and I'll keep you all informed. I really enjoyed all the thoughts and comments. What an interesting group you are! (and Arlene, thanks for the PDR reference, I am on it!) Love to all, Dan

2 comments:

Seal Family said...

Good Morning Dan. I have been following the comments regarding your dilemma regarding traditional v. alternative treatment and I must say you are very brave to let so many people give you opinions!! But I did read that you said that you would do what is best for you. As it always should be! Ingrid has put the subject in a very solid prospective, I think, without her traditional treatment, insulin; her diabetes would have killed her. On a personal level if we did not treat Rebecca’s ADD with traditional medicine she would not be as successful as she is in school. It is a combination of tactics traditional and alternative, that has helped her academically and socially. I do believe there needs to be a marriage of traditional and alternative treatment, but as you know all too well the traditional side has too many “egos” and will not always want to play in the sandbox with the others. I am a firm believer in alternative medicine since I have been the recipient of good results. I, like the others support your decision to wait on the herbs and see how the next phase plays out.

Again you are so lucky to have so many people sending you such positive thoughts and encouragement, that no matter what path you take, the support that is there for you, Susan, Catherine and Julia is so inspiring! Take care. Love the Seals.

Spike said...

Hi Dan,

I've been thinking a lot about you and am hoping the chemo isn't having too many adverse effects while doing its job...killing those cancer beasts. Hang in there!

Love,
Lynne