Posted: 5/16/2010 12:17:13 PM EDT
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When someone is in the last weeks or days of their life with a very painful cancer eating them alive and causing so much pain they have to take mega doses of pain meds which basically puts them in a semi coma, why don't they surgically sever the spine at a point above the cancer?
Or a spinal block? They can do the block when a Woman delivers a baby, it's not like you're worried about long term paralysis. |
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There are things you can do, but folks with terminal cancer are easy to hurt ie kill if you aren't careful.
Also, what you suggest can, IIRC, play havoc with blood pressure and cause a whole bunch of other problems. Fix one thing, mess up two. It is why medicine can be so dang hard. |
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There is a procedure where they kill the nerves leading to the abdomen using a strong solution of alcohol injected into the nerve. It is effective for as much as several months before the nerves grow back.
I know they use it for pancreatic cancer. I do not know why it is not used more often. If I had terminal cancer I would much rather have pain managed in that way than to have massive amounts of mind-altering opioids. |
| I had cancer in my early 20s. Surgery and chemo fixed it, but I resolved then that if I have cancer again after, say, age 65, I'll load up on hookers and cocaine rather than go thru chemo again. That shit kicked my ass at age 23 and I saw it ravage the elderly folks in the chemo ward with me. |
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in Switzerland, you can go through a process (look EXIT and DIGNITAS over the internet), and after many medical and juridical checks, you can choose to end your life sooner than the cancer would do, by taking yourself a medication. The way it should be here but too many fundies to stop that from happening. |
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Two of the three people I know who have died in the past year or so of "cancer" have actually died from chemo. If I were diagnosed with terminal cancer, I'd have to think long and hard before I did that to myself. Depends on how far it has progressed and what the probability for recovery is. I watched a relative go through it and die in the end anyway. If the docs could not give at least a 60% chance of full recovery then I'd have to pass on the chemo. No reason to drag it out longer only to spend your additional time weak, helpless and sick. |
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Quoted: Two of the three people I know who have died in the past year or so of "cancer" have actually died from chemo. If I were diagnosed with terminal cancer, I'd have to think long and hard before I did that to myself. I've already made that decision for myself and talked it over with my family. There is no way I'll put myself through the process and run up half a million dollars in medical bills to prolong my life a year. If I have any form of cancer that has less than a 50% prognosis for survival, I'm done. I'll enjoy my last months and days, and not spend them in pain sick as a dog laying in a hospital bed. Yes, I have a living will and standing DNR order, too. |
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Two of the three people I know who have died in the past year or so of "cancer" have actually died from chemo. If I were diagnosed with terminal cancer, I'd have to think long and hard before I did that to myself. I've already made that decision for myself and talked it over with my family. There is no way I'll put myself through the process and run up half a million dollars in medical bills to prolong my life a year. If I have any form of cancer that has less than a 50% prognosis for survival, I'm done. I'll enjoy my last months and days, and not spend them in pain sick as a dog laying in a hospital bed. Yes, I have a living will and standing DNR order, too. Amen to that. My wife was a cancer nurse for 14 years at MD Anderson in Houston, and has been a hospice nurse for the past five. She told me on a number of occasions that there were times when a patient started their treatment that she wanted to tell them to just go home and enjoy their final weeks or months with their family. 
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No reason to drag it out longer only to spend your additional time weak, helpless and sick. Meh. Either way you're gonna be massively screwed up whether you chemo or not. Me? I'd rather take the chance the docs can pull out a hat trick. Beside,s there's too many people out there who'd rejoice upon the notice of my demise, why should I humor them? 
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No reason to drag it out longer only to spend your additional time weak, helpless and sick. Meh. Either way you're gonna be massively screwed up whether you chemo or not. Me? I'd rather take the chance the docs can pull out a hat trick. Beside,s there's too many people out there who'd rejoice upon the notice of my demise, why should I humor them?
Most cancer patients do not "go down hill" until they start chemo. It's one of those things where the treatment is worse than the disease. Not to mention the burden and debt I would leave on my family after a long fruitless battle. If the odds were not in my favor then once again I no thanks. |
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No reason to drag it out longer only to spend your additional time weak, helpless and sick. Meh. Either way you're gonna be massively screwed up whether you chemo or not. Me? I'd rather take the chance the docs can pull out a hat trick. Beside,s there's too many people out there who'd rejoice upon the notice of my demise, why should I humor them?
Most cancer patients do not "go down hill" until they start chemo. It's one of those things where the treatment is worse than the disease. Not to mention the burden and debt I would leave on my family after a long fruitless battle. If the odds were not in my favor then once again I no thanks. Unless you've experienced it yourself, you can't really say all that. If all the money I have today would have kept my dad sitting next to me for just another day, I would have done it. The treatment is bad, sure, but it can work. My dad had a horrible prognosis when he was diagnosed. He lived for seven years after it because of surgery, chemo, and radiation. And the worst of that treatment simply did not compare to what the cancer did to him in the last two months of his life. As to the spinal block––some patients do something similar. My dad had a procedure done about a month before he died to lessen the pain through minor surgery to the spine. Sadly, it did not work to minimize the pain, but it was worth a shot. Narcotics would have had the same pain minimizing effect, but narcotics diminish the appetite even further AND (most important to my dad) the narcotics harms the mind and diminishes your last interactions with your family and friends. ETA: My dad should have died within 6 months of his initial diagnosis. Chemo let me keep my dad until I was 27 instead of 20. |
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Been through it twice. Not all cancers are excruciatingly painful. Most can be managed with oral meds. Personally, I think when someone is terminal, they should be allowed to choose euthanasia. Too many self righteous twits and fundies in the world who want to impose their theology on everyone for that to happen though. |
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There is increasing evidence that chemotherapy, while useful for hematologic cancers (cancers of the blood or bone marrow, such as leukemia or lymphoma), may not be particularly helpful for solid tumors like lung cancer, colon cancer, etc.
"The contribution of cytotoxic chemotherapy to 5-year survival in adult malignancies." (Abstract) And a discussion of this article: "AUSSIE ONCOLOGISTS CRITICIZE CHEMOTHERAPY - PART ONE" (scroll down 1/4 of the page) IANAO (I am not an oncologist) but a PA in a dermatology practice - we see people with melanomas, and those with more than melanoma in situ (early cancer still in the top layers of the skin) get referred to a surgical oncologist for wide excision and lymph node biopsies. People with metastatic melanoma (cancer that has spread throughout the body) generally do not respond to chemotherapy, and radiation and surgery in these patients is mainly palliative. Part of the problem is how the efficacy of these medications is reported using relative risk - a particular chemotherapy agent may reduce relative risk by, for example, 50%, but when you look at the absolute risk, the actual decrease may be from 4% to 2%, only a 2% reduction in absolute risk. |
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There is increasing evidence that chemotherapy, while useful for hematologic cancers (cancers of the blood or bone marrow, such as leukemia or lymphoma), may not be particularly helpful for solid tumors like lung cancer, colon cancer, etc. "The contribution of cytotoxic chemotherapy to 5-year survival in adult malignancies." (Abstract) And a discussion of this article: "AUSSIE ONCOLOGISTS CRITICIZE CHEMOTHERAPY - PART ONE" (scroll down 1/4 of the page) IANAO (I am not an oncologist) but a PA in a dermatology practice - we see people with melanomas, and those with more than melanoma in situ (early cancer still in the top layers of the skin) get referred to a surgical oncologist for wide excision and lymph node biopsies. People with metastatic melanoma (cancer that has spread throughout the body) generally do not respond to chemotherapy, and radiation and surgery in these patients is mainly palliative. Part of the problem is how the efficacy of these medications is reported using relative risk - a particular chemotherapy agent may reduce relative risk by, for example, 50%, but when you look at the absolute risk, the actual decrease may be from 4% to 2%, only a 2% reduction in absolute risk. My father was a surgical oncologist who lived for seven years after being diagnosed with Stage 3 Colon Cancer (likely actually Stage 4 because small tumors were found in other organs after surgery during the first pre-chemo scans) by treating it was aggressive surgery (of course, haha) and lots and lots of chemo and radiation. Chemo worked right up until the last few months of his life. |
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No reason to drag it out longer only to spend your additional time weak, helpless and sick. Meh. Either way you're gonna be massively screwed up whether you chemo or not. Me? I'd rather take the chance the docs can pull out a hat trick. Beside,s there's too many people out there who'd rejoice upon the notice of my demise, why should I humor them?
Most cancer patients do not "go down hill" until they start chemo. It's one of those things where the treatment is worse than the disease. Not to mention the burden and debt I would leave on my family after a long fruitless battle. If the odds were not in my favor then once again I no thanks. Ever wondered why chemo is so painful/nauseating/dangerous? A key component of many of the drugs is hemotoxic snake venom. Something in the venom attacks abnormal cells first, before attacking healthy ones. |