Not Medical Advice

[Palmyra]

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Hi everyone,

I've been lurking for a long time but just started posting. I'm looking for some general advice about how to talk to my family about medicine, but I want to be clear I'm not asking for any medical advice at all. So here's the deal. My mom is into alternative medicine. I don't mean casually, I mean she spends all her free time reading books about it, websites, going to NDs, acupuncture, chinese medicine, etc. For her specific health issues, it has worked well and she has had some really bad experiences with MDs. But now my grandpa has cancer. And she wants to help him the best she can, is scared, and is turning to me for help understanding the latest research and answering questions that his doctors haven't been able to answer. I'm just a pre-med, and I don't know what to say to her. Yeah, I've taken a cancer research class, but it didn't teach me what to say in this situation. She has been to a urologist, an ND, an ND oncologist, and I think an oncologist MD. They are all recommending the same treatment, which doesn't cure the cancer, just prolongs the life expectancy. She has questions about what other options he may have, and the doctors aren't answering and I don't know enough to answer. How do I tell her to find a doctor that will answer her questions and make her feel at ease?

Thanks for any advice anyone has.

 

[gyngyn]

How do I tell her to find a doctor that will answer her questions and make her feel at ease?

Even better, find him a doctor that will answer his questions and put him at ease.

 

[Palmyra]

Gyngyn - I totally agree! Unfortunately he is 100% deflecting to her so I have no idea what he thinks/feels/knows. He's on autopilot.

 

[gyngyn]

Gyngyn - I totally agree! Unfortunately he is 100% deflecting to her so I have no idea what he thinks/feels/knows. He's on autopilot.

This is why your family needs a physician; someone skilled in matters like these.

 

[thatwouldbeanarchy]

I'm not even in med school yet and people I know have already started asking me for medical advice. I don't know anything yet! 😱

Seriously, though I'm sorry that you're going through this, OP. I'm sure it must be difficult. I know this may not solve the larger questions about what treatment options are available to your grandpa but maybe a support group for families of cancer patients might help? I'm sure your mom is under a lot of stress. It's scary to interact with the medical system when you don't understand all of what's going on and feel like your questions aren't being answered. Support groups can help ease some of the burden that caregivers often feel. And on the off chance that there aren't many other good treatment options besides the one you mentioned, it may help her to cope with that as well.

 

[Goro]

Very sorry to hear of your owes, OP. Unfortunately, for your mom, pseudoscientific medical notions are a belief system for her, so attempts to help engage in rational/critical thinking will only lead to cognitive dissonance and her further digging her heels in.

 

[LizzyM]

Hi everyone,

I've been lurking for a long time but just started posting. I'm looking for some general advice about how to talk to my family about medicine, but I want to be clear I'm not asking for any medical advice at all. So here's the deal. My mom is into alternative medicine. I don't mean casually, I mean she spends all her free time reading books about it, websites, going to NDs, acupuncture, chinese medicine, etc. For her specific health issues, it has worked well and she has had some really bad experiences with MDs. But now my grandpa has cancer. And she wants to help him the best she can, is scared, and is turning to me for help understanding the latest research and answering questions that his doctors haven't been able to answer. I'm just a pre-med, and I don't know what to say to her. Yeah, I've taken a cancer research class, but it didn't teach me what to say in this situation. She has been to a urologist, an ND, an ND oncologist, and I think an oncologist MD. They are all recommending the same treatment, which doesn't cure the cancer, just prolongs the life expectancy. She has questions about what other options he may have, and the doctors aren't answering and I don't know enough to answer. How do I tell her to find a doctor that will answer her questions and make her feel at ease?

Thanks for any advice anyone has.

She has obtained the opinions of doctors and other professionals and she doesn't like the answer: her father's cancer is treatable but incurable and everyone is recommending the same treatment. I suspect that she wants to hear that there is an herb or other alternative that will be a cure or at least an effective treatment with fewer side effects.

One thought I have is that you could see if there are any clinical trials underway in your area of experimental drugs or other treatments including what is called "alternative medicine" for the specific cancer your grandfather has. You can search the database from clinicaltrials.gov to learn more. This should be in addition to whatever recommended treatment has been offered to him, not in place of it.

 

[Palmyra]

Thank you all so much, all of your comments really mean a lot to me. You are all spot on about the situation and I'll take the thoughts and advice to heart and see what I can come up with for them.

Thanks again.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G935A using Tapatalk

 

[TaupePremed]

I watched from a distance as a woman treated her colon cancer with coffee enemas (not joking, sadly) and no chemotherapy or surgery, and her husband let it happen. She died. It was extremely sad.

The problem was that the MDs were being honest and the quack with the coffee enemas was a lying quack. The MDs told the couple that she might die either way, the MDs gave an honest appraisal of how unpleasant chemo is and how unpleasant surgery is. The coffee enema quack was playing by a different set of rules.

This married couple was not at all crazy, irrational, or uneducated before the cancer. But the cancer made them act irrationally.

When only one person is promising to cure your cancer, you might do very stupid things even without a preexisting history of believing in alternative medicine.

This is a true story so unfortunately I don't know the moral of the story.

 

[CaliforniaDreamer]

The coffee enema quack was playing by a different set of rules.

That's a very concise way of putting it, definitely true!

 

[Promethean]

The cancer is incurable even with treatment? Multiple physicians and some naturopaths have confirmed this? And your mom is asking you for advice?

It could be that what she needs is for someone to say, plainly, that he is probably going to die of this, and that the best thing to do for him is whatever maximizes his comfort and quality of life in the time remaining to him. If there are alternative therapies, like massage or aromatherapy or music therapy, that serve to enhance his quality of life and ease his discomfort, those should absolutely be included in the plan.

Lots of people are more comfortable dispensing hope, even where there really is none. Even doctors sometimes fail to present a grim prognosis candidly, talking about "options" without specifying that "everything we can do" can include some very expensive and futile forms of torture. Some "alternative medicine practitioners" have made careers out of selling false hope, and have no difficulty finding customers.

If the prognosis is as you describe, see if you can get your mom to consider hospice. Although hospice is about supportive care and not curative treatment, many people live longer and healthier while in hospice than they would have done if they'd still been receiving aggressive treatment. Hospices also have a full support team that can help your entire family walk through this process more easily, shifting some of the burden off you to be the expert on these matters. Most also have benign alternative therapies integrated into their programs, and your grandfather could receive care right where he is living now, without having to move into a facility. So many resources are available, basically just for the asking, but so many people fail to take advantage of them because they misunderstand hospice as "giving up" rather than as taking charge of the end of life process.

I'm really sorry to hear that you are going through this, and wish the best for you and your family.