The Medical System: Broken and Amazing
The medical system is broken.
If you don't advocate, if you don't fight, if you don't question, if you don't know what to ask, you get put into a box, put into the system.
And also, the medical system is amazing.
HER2 positive has amazing breakthrough treatments. Survival rates were low until two modern day treatments became available. Now odds are the same as if not better than those with HER2 negative cancers.
I knew nothing about cancer two weeks ago.
Nothing.
And now, while no expert, our third oncologist visit today, I knew what he was going to say before he said it. I knew way more than he said. The diagnosis always has the same standard treatment.
Six rounds of chemo, three weeks between each.
And chemo is difficult. It's poison. Life saving poison. But still poison.
Her chemo will be traditional chemo plus two HER2 treatments.
One HER2 Treatment will continue for 12 months.
But it's always chemo first.
Surgery second.
Radiation third.
And then more HER2 treatments.
And then 10 years of hormone blockers. Ten years!
How do you tell an oncologist - hey, we kinda don't love western medicine…
So we don't say anything.
We do our own research. Can it truly be reversed metabolically? Functional medicine practitioners think yes. Most holistic believe you can make it without chemo. But make it? What does that mean? Not die. Or die later?
We look into going to Mexico.
We look into an Oasis clinic in Florida focused on the whole person (whatever that means).
We look into hyperthermia treatment.
We look into oxidation via hyperbolic chamber.
We look into supplements upon supplements upon supplements.
We think fasting may work.
May? Probably not great logic.
But western medicine uses poison and surgery and radiation and hormone blockers. Not ideal. And yet it works. It really does.
The best book I've read over the last two weeks on this is How to Starve Cancer by Jane McLelland. I've read three other cancer books that are garbage. One guy says to eat more oranges and take baking soda. That should fix it. According to him. But Jane lays out a complicated plan which may work.
Basically you can't just starve cancer. You can't just stop eating sugar and carbs and do Keto and the cancer won't grow. Sure, cancer does use glucose to grow. But it adapts to whatever it can find. And while Keto eating and removing oxalates from your diet may help, it won't reverse it.
I wish it would too.
And so. Here we are.
Stuck between knowing too much and not enough.
Stuck between the shock of our new reality and a resolve to take each step with purpose.
How can we show others how to deal with hard things?
How can we show our kids how to deal with hard things?
How can we lean even more upon the Lord with our hard things?
We aren't sure.
But we are about to find out.
A chronic diagnosis is mourning in reverse.
Usually, a tragic event happens, and you mourn the loss.
With cancer, a surprising event happens, and we mourn what is to come.
And we find new perspective along the way.
So our mourning turns to joy. And sorrow to gladness.
A friend wrote in:
"And yes you will both be changed by this experience. And your kids will be changed. And we will learn and change
And thank God for that"
And thank you Lord for the changes to come. Make us and our kids and those around us, need you more.
Love, the Murrays