Cancer Shirt

How to survive Cancer and Chemotherapy

The INDY formula . . . AAS method . . . RTC’s (which I may explain later)

Diagnostic details 1993

In 1993 I had a blood test and was told there was something wrong with my blood. Soon after that I had a CAT scan and was told that there were a lot of unusual lumps in my groin, my abdomen, chest, and neck.

Soon after that I had a bone marrow biopsy and was told there some abnormalities were found.

I then consulted a cancer specialist and told him that I was not interested in reassurance but wanted the plain, objective, scientific facts.

He told me that my body was riddled with cancer, and that I would be dead within 2 month, with no hope of a cure, and that I should tidy up my financial affairs.

I asked him if that was the best or worst case scenario, and he said I might live 20 years. I then began asking questions.

I asked why he thought I would be dead in two months? He then explained that had one small lump in their neck, about the size of a golf ball, and if they cut it out early, and then applied chemotherapy, they could remove the main cancer, and any small amounts which had started to spread. He added that if people had cancers ‘only’ in their chest, or only in their abdomen, there was sometimes success in curing it, but when there were multiple lumps in the chest and abdomen the chances of a cure were slim. He said that in my cause there were lumps in my neck, chest, abdomen, and groin, and the cancer had probably existed for years or even decades and was too late to stop. The best he could do was to send me home and wait until lumps started to block my lungs or my heart, or kidneys, and other vital organs and threaten immediate death. He would then remove them by surgery as each blockage occurred, to prolong my survival. He said that he couldn’t chop all of the lumps out now because there would not be enough of my body left, and the cancer was also in my blood and bone marrow, so I would die anyway.

How and why I survived

I will now give some insight into how I survived the cancer, the surgery, the chemotherapy, and am still alive in 2012, whereas most other people have died.

1. The AD method

2. The diagnosis and treatment was given at the Royal Adelaide Hospital (RAH) which has the reputation of being one of the top cancer hospitals in Australia, and some say it is one of the best in the world, and it is associated with the Institute of Medical and Veterinary Science, and the Hanson Cancer Institute. Many people come from interstate to be treated there. It is only a half an hours drive from my home.

3. I phoned The National Cancer Institute and asked them to send me information about the cancer and side effects in plain English so that I could get a good introduction and basic understanding to the problems. A few days later I received several booklets of information and read them.

4. The RAH has an education unit with staff who discuss the side-effects of treatment, and how to recognise them before the treatment starts, and what to report and do about them. They are also accessible for phone enquiries.

5. The RAH also has a social work department with staff who solve some of the problems of how to get to hospital when you are too ill to travel by bus. For example it is not practical to go to and from the hospital by buses or other public transport, because vomiting is a side effect of chemotherapy. Hence the nurses provided vomit bags and social workers arranged for car and ambulance transport when necessary.

6. I was instructed to have blood tests (I think every month), and CAT scans and consultations with a cancer specialist every three months, and a bone marrow bone marrow biopsy every 12 months. I was also told to report any lumps or other symptoms immediately because the purpose of the monitoring was to catch the cancer as soon as it changed from low grade to high grade. I was advised that immediate treatment at that stage would stop the cancer before it blocked major organs, and before it spread out of control. A physical examination to check for internal lumps, and blood pressure was measured at each 3 monthly consultation,.

7. When I was told I had only 2 months to live I was not concerned because I didn’t have any symptoms at all, and because in my personal experience doctors had been wrong with their diagnosis in the past. I therefore have a ‘wait and see’ attitude, and a ‘don’t assume the worst’ approach. I decided that if I was dead in 2 months the diagnosis would be correct, and if not, it would be wrong. In other words – don’t panic unnecessarily. I also had a lot of other health problems so I didn’t care anyway. i.e. If I was going to die – let it be.

8. After 2 months passed I thought – that was lucky, and then five months passed, and I suppose I wrote my will within a year. During that time I did some reading on the subject and came to a very causual conclusion that I had a life expectancy of 2 years, and at the most five years.

9. I didn’t want anyone to know I had cancer because I didn’t want it to have an adverse effect on my personality by having people come up to me all day and pity me. Consequently, I only told about 3 people in the first six years, and only about six in the entire period. Essentially their role was to come and get me if ever I was too sick to get out of bed and get to hospital on my own etc., or to do the shopping if ever I was too sick to do it myself which rarely happened.

10. About six years went by when a small lump, the size of a golf ball, appeared on the side of my neck, and stayed that size for about 18 months. It wasn’t removed because a blood test confirmed that the cancer was still ‘slow growing’, and treatment was only given when it was ‘fast growing’. The idea was that the chemo was only effective at killing fast growing cells such as the hair, finger nails, and cancer, and could be stopped before it killed too many of the the slow growing cells of your body, and then the cancer would be gone, and your body could recover.

11. After a few years went by I became aware of some of the fringy frootloop theories, and none of them seemed sensible to me, but I was going to die anyway, so I had nothing to lose. One of them was aimed at starving for long enough to see the cancer die, and then outlive it and start eating six weeks later to recover. I decided that there was not real risk because I could stop anytime, and I could use the lump on my neck as a guage of it’s effectiveness. i.e. If the lump went down the diet would be killing it, if not, the diet was useless.

I had absolutely no food for four weeks, and lived solely on about half a dozen one litre bottles of mixed fruit juice potions per day,

After about a month I was becoming weak, and getting worse, and the lump was the same size, so the diet wasn’t working, and I abandoned it.

While I was starving every piece of food looked delicious, but I couldn’t eat it, and when I stopped the diet I went to a cake shop and stuffed my face full of cakes and scones etc. I also had a cup of coffee, but the milk seemed off, and I contracted severe food poisoning and starved and vomited from another week because I was simply too sick to eat. and then I recovered. The vomiting may have been induced because I put too much food into my starved stomach too soon, or because of the milk was old and off. It was the last of about 2 of the fingy nonsense methods that I tried.

The experience gave me confidence in the durability of my body in harsh circumstances.

When I was going through the most severe side effects of chemotherapy, I looked upon it as a situation in which the rich, healthy, and privileged people of the world had to climb Mount Everest to seek a challenge, and test their courage and their limits of endurance, and prove themselves, and gain confidence, whereas I didn’t have to go anywhere to deal with the greatest challenge anyone is ever likely to experience.

To be continued . . .

The nausea side-effect from chemotherapy

The worst side-effect that I had from CHOP chemotherapy was nausea for about 2 weeks of each of five sessions of chemo given over six months. The worst side-effect from DHAP chemotherapy was many weeks of dry reaching. The worst side-effect from the stem cell transplant was six months of nausea and vomiting.

The medication prescribed to treat the nausea were not very effective, and one of them caused a very common side-effect which was an annoying aching of my shoulders and hips which was worse than the nausea, so i stopped using the anti-nausea medication very early in the treatment processes.

The most common side-effects for stem cell transplants are pain, particularly caused by throat ulcers, and nausea. In fact I was told that virtually all patients had so much pain that they were all given a morphine machine attached to their wrists by a tube into their veins so that they could administer the pain killing drug in small doses themselves, any time they wanted for 2 weeks following treatment.

In my case three doctors examined the ulcers in my throat, one after another, and each of them took turns trying to persuade me to stop acting like a hero and accept the morphine machine to help with the pain. I told them that I didn’t have much pain, and let them give me one small injection to see what happened. It didn’t make any difference, so I didn’t have any more injections, and was not attached to the machine.

In fact, the reason those doctors were so concerned was because they looked into my mouth and could see a massive amount of fungal infection in my throat, but the only time I felt any pain was when I tried to eat, because it felt as if the food was passing through a tangled mess of razor blades in my throat.

I naturally tried to eat, but found it extremely difficult, and even if I managed to get it into my stomach, it usually came out as vomit immediately, or within a few minutes. At times, I was either vomiting, or passing diarrhoea, or urinating almost every fifteen minutes. The only nutrients that I was able to consume effectively was small cartons of flavored milk, or small cans of vitamin enriched liquid food.

Although I didn’t have much difficulty dealing with the pain, I continued to have extreme problems with nausea. For example, freshly cooked meals would be delivered to the ward three times a day, and I would feel like vomiting, just from the smell of it, as soon as it came through the door fifteen feet away, At other times I would feel nauseous as soon as the food was placed on the platform at the end of my bed. I would also vomit just from the smell of plain tap water because I could smell whatever normal chemicals were in it, such as chlorine. By contrast, there was another man who did not appear to be affected by nausea, and he could eat greasy fish and chips without any problems.

While I was having those problems I would ask other patients and neighbours how they relieved them, and for the most part nothing much was useful, so I just had to tolerate the symptoms until they were over.

On one occasion an elderly neighbour saw me staggering down the street, and asked me what the problem was, She then invited me into her flat and said that she had found that a drink of brandy and dry ginger had given her some relief, and hen she gave me a drink. It did provide some very mild relief of nausea. From that day onwards she would always invite me in for a drink each time she saw me walk past.

I recently saw a comment on Twitter about the beneficial effects of ginger for chemotherapy and nausea with a link to a website here.

Several other patients recommended that I try marihuana, but I never did, so I don’t know if it would be effective or not.

However, I do not wish to be a drug addict, so even if I did try it, I would only use it for as long as required for the purpose of relieving nausea,

Exercise and cancer treatment

(This item was written on 8-8-12, about 8 years after I had surgery, chemotherapy, and a stem cell transplant to treat Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.)

While I was being given chemotherapy for cancer I was often so ill that I would rather stay in bed, because the effort of getting out was too difficult, and all I wanted to do was rest.

However, I drew a reasonable conclusion that while the toxic chemicals were in my body they would be having toxic affects beyond what they were intended for, and that the best thing to do would be to exercise to get my blood flowing through my kidneys to flush them out as quickly as possible.

Consequently I did the following things while watching other patients reading books, or watching TV in bed all day

I would walk the length of two wards about three to five hundred times a day, sometimes in the morning, and then having a rest, and then again in the afternoon, and then again in the evening.

On one occasion I had surgery to remove a 5 cm cancerous tumor from my neck. The night before I asked if I could leave the hospital and walk the streets during the Adelaide festival of arts. I explained that the operation was on my neck and not my feet so it should be okay. I walked down Rundle mall and obtained some free tickets to a show, and then walked a mile to the casino to spend about half an hour on the poker machines. When I returned to the hospital the nurses were surprised because they thought I was afraid of the operation and went home to avoid it.

I had the operation the next morning, and the same evening I walked down the mall and attended the free show, and went to the casino again to play the poker machine for a short time, and then returned to the hospital. I was discharged from the hospital and returned home the next day.

On another occasion I had an operation on a 10 cm. diameter cancer that was blocking my left kidney, and had a few problems in the next 2 or 3 days, and was then transferred to an out-hospital for about a week. It was near Semaphore beach so I went for a 100 yard walk to look at the beach and the sea. The next morning I walked about half a mile to the library, and then about 5-10 km along the beach and back, and did that for a few days until I was discharged from the hospital and went home. On one occasion, about 2 weeks later I overdid the exercise, and strained the scar, and felt a rip internally, accompanied by some symptoms which indicated that the injury was probably followed by an adhesion.

While I was at home I walked at least 2 hours per day, at least three, or up to seven days per week, especially in the years when I had cancer, but was not being given surgery or chemotherapy.

However, I had to be practical, and I have to say that there were many times, sometimes for months at a time, when I was so ill from the chemotherapy, that all I could do was stay in bed, or get out and crawl about, or more or less just stagger along the street.

I always thought that I had to be in my best condition before I got smashed about by the toxic affects of the chemicals again.

Some more information on my diet and exercise in relation to heart disease and cancer is dicussed in my iTunes talk available here.

Diet and infection avoidance during chemotherapy

(added 4-10-2012 and improved later)

Shortly before being treated with CHOP chemotherapy I was advised that chemotherapy impairs the immune system, and that I should avoid crowds, and also avoid eating at restaurants where food might be contaminated, and to avoid buying the type of foods which are more likely to be a source of infection. For example, I was told not to eat lettuce.

I took that advice for the six months of treatment, and essentially lived like a hermit, with instructions to my friends not to visit me until after I survived. I treated the whole process as a challenge, and would walk slowly to the shops, and when I was within ten feet of the doors I would wait until they opened and rush briskly to the greengrocers and through the supermarket, and not slow that process except when absolutely necessary, until I was outside again, and 10 feet from the door, and then I would walk slowly home.

I was given the same advice when the cancer returned 18 months later, and before I started DHAP chemotherapy. However, the previous instance involved a lot of social isolation, and during DHAP I did occasionally attend social events.

Soon after that, when I was being treated with a stem cell transplant I was kept in an isolation ward for two weeks to avoid infection, and was given some nutrients intravenously, and the food was prepared by the hospital, and specifically chosen because it was the type which minimised the risk of infection.

The floors and bedding were kept clean, the air was filtered , and I was advised to shower regularly and to keep the catheter insertion sites clean, and I asked my friends not to visit me until the treatment was over.

Despite that a catheter entry site became infected, and I was given intravenous antibiotics to treat it.

I may give more information on my diet and infection avoidance methods later.

Fats in the diet

When foods such as grains or vegetables are sprayed with pesticides and are then eaten by animals, the toxic chemicals tends to deposit in the fatty tissue of their bodies, and, consequently, as those animals grow older they build up in larger concentrations, and then, when the people consume lamb and beef they tend to consume higher quantities of those chemicals in one serve.

Therefore a good way of preventing cancer would be to eliminate toxic chemicals from the diet by eating foods which have been grown in the natural way without pesticides

It would also be an advantage to eliminate fatty meats from the diet.

In other words people who consumed a natural or organically grown vegetarian diet would be more likely to lead a healthier, cancer free, and longer life,

Cause and prevention of NHL

There have been some studies which link Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma to previous infections with the Epstein-Barr virus which I was aware of before I was diagnosed, and I had considered various possible viral causes so it didn’t completely surprise me.

About 2 weeks before bladder surgery in 1993 I took aspros to relieve some mild neck ache and prevent it from becoming a problem when I went into hospital, and then a neighbor, who had previously been a nurse advised me to stop, because that drug thins the blood and can slow down the healing of surgical cuts.

Furthermore the aspro stays in the blood for two or more weeks.

I also had a flu immunisation injection to prevent the flu while I was in hospital (I prefer to be dealing with one problem at a time properly, not 2).

After the operation I was sore in the internal scar area and walked in a slightly bent position to avoid it, but I was told to ignore the pain and stand up straight and walk properly. When I did that I was walking in pain. Soon after returning to my bed I noticed that the urine which drained into my catheter bag was turning dark red to black, indicating that I was bleeding internally and that the blood was mixing with the pale urine.

Another patient in the ward had pale urine in his bag and I asked him about it. He said that he spoke to an uncle before the operation, and was told that he had taken aspirin, and bled a lot, and advised against it. That patient did not take aspirin, did not have thin blood, and did not bleed internally.

The thick bloody urine in my bladder soon formed into blood clots which blocked the flow of urine several times. Each time I had to go through the very painful process of having those plugs of blood forced back into the bladder to relieve the blockage. It was done by giving me a morphine injection for pain, and then placing a syringe full of fluid into the catheter and punching it forward to dislodge the blood clot.

By the second or third day I contracted a urinary infection.

I was also having daily blood tests, and within a week I was told that my blood had something wrong with it and needed to be investigated further, after I left the hospital

I then had a CAT scan, and a bone marrow biopsy, which confirmed that I had Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.

Hence the many possible causes include a previous virus, or one or more factors in the combination of aspirin, flu immunisation, blood loss, and blood infection while I was in hospital. The combination of an infection while I was producing new blood to offset the lost blood would seem to be a plausible cause of Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma which is a type of blood cancer.

See a more recent report showing the link to the Epstein Barr virus here.

When opportunity knocks

I was diagnosed with cancer and given two months to live with no hope of a cure in 1994, but a lot time went by and many things happened after that, and ultimately a stem cell transplant in 2000. Four years later I was still having varying degrees of side-effects when I rang my doctor and said that I was too exhausted to attend an appointment and would see him again in a week. He insisted that I phone an ambulance and go to hospital, and I said that I was too exhausted to do that, and after three or more times I finally agreed. About an hour later I heard a knock on the door, and then crawled from my bed to the door.

I looked up at the handle and wondered how I would get the energy to stand up and open it, and after about six attempts I made one final, and extremely difficult, and lucky leap, and caught the handle. I opened the door, and saw two people in ambulance uniforms. The trip from the door to the ambulance and then to the hospital was also difficult, but I made it, and survived a week of treatment, and another two weeks at home before making a complete recovery, and haven’t had any problems since.

I can remember what happened as clearly as if it was yesterday.

I suppose it is that old story – when opportunity knocks – take it, because opportunities like that don’t happen very often.

Why I decided to have a stem cell transplant for cancer

By the time I was told that I would need to have a stem cell transplant for cancer, I had already been through six months of CHOP chemotherapy, eighteen months earlier, and had just been through three months of DHAP chemotherapy, and I had seen other people go through chemo and the side effects and die, so I knew of the potential outcomes.

Consequently I had two choices.

The first was to go through the transplant procedure and the potential side effects, with the small possibility of surviving.

The second was to not have the transplant, and wait for the cancer to get worse and produce the severe cancer symptoms, and die a painful and distressing death, with no hope of a cure.

I made my decision on the basis that it didn’t matter what choice I made, the consequences were not going to be pleasant, so I considered in favor of the transplant. As they say it was “the lesser of two evils“.

I also took into account that the side effects didn’t start until a few hours after the chemicals were inserted into my veins, so after that was started the course was set.

There were a lot of problems but I am still alive 19 years later, and haven’t had any significant symptoms or side effects since 2004, i.e. for the most recent eleven years.

The only obvious remnant is that during CHOP and DHAP chemotherapy my hair became thin and grew thick again, and during the stem cell transplant I went bald and now my hair is so thin and spars that it is better to keep my head shaved.

Research information

I have recovered from many serious diseases, and one of my methods is to look for information about people who survived to determine what they did which was different from those who didn’t. For example, I also had angina heart disease in 1997, while I had cancer, and read a book about how Nathan Pritikan survived for 20 years by using a vegetarian diet, so I made some slight modifications to that diet to suit my requirements and treated it successfully. That diet may have assisted in curing the cancer. However, during the periods of chemotherapy the immune system is impaired by the chemicals, so it is necessary to avoid eating some vegetables, such as lettuce, which tends to have bacterial contamination, and to avoid eating at salad bars in restaurants for the same reason.

Also, I did a lot of walking as a form of exercise but I noticed that most of the other patients were laying in bed all day. Of course there were many months when I was too exhausted to do anything, but when ever I was able I walked, sometimes for 100 yards, or 400 yards, or for two hours or more a day.

I don’t know if those facts are responsible for my recovery or not, but they were two of the main things that I did which were different.

For more information about the diet see here