Natural dying methods: Unfit parents hide son from cancer treatment

I don't agree with albert77 re: the 13-year-old being able to make his own decisions, but I sure as fuck agree with him re: the joke that is modern cancer care. These assholes haven't figured out a fucking thing, and it doesn't behoove them to do so. It's better to fill bodies with poison that may or may not work (emphasis on the latter). If they die, they die. if they live, they have to keep pouring money into the coffers for follow-up treatments, exams, etc.

The day you cure cancer is the day thousands of hospitals cease to exist. We had to take my mom to a big city cancer hospital in January. Middle of the great fucking depression and that place was fucking hopping every fucking day. Every day I drove in there, there was a traffic jam. Why WOULD they cure it?

It's not nearly as noble as Dr. Cox makes it out to be on Scrubs: "We're just trying to extend the game." Maybe the doctors are that noble, but not the pieces of shit running the show. Poison to cure poison? Who in their right mind came up with that?

Fuck those fucking assholes.

 

No shit. My mom has been drug through this stuff since Feb. The plan is to continue through mid-July, then a double-mastectomy, then possibly another six months of this poison via IV.

 

BYH,
I don't want to rub salt in your wounds, but cancer isn't actually poison, it's a mutation. The idea of using poison is to kill the cells that have mutated. Is it not a perfect system, that's for sure and getting well often means getting sicker first. But, medicine has made great strides.

http://www.cancer.org/docroot/NWS/content/NWS_1_1x_Cancer_Death_Rate_Steadily_Declining.asp

Are there terrible doctors out there and other in the medical profession not doing their jobs or making mistakes. Of course. Does everyone survive. No?
But the odds right now are better than ever. Trust me. I know.
When my mom's cancer showed on her mammogram, her doctor told her not to worry about the lump and sent her home. That was in the late 1970s. Can you imagine that happening now? It happened, and based on anecdotal stuff I've heard, more than you'd expect. That doctor fucking killed her. There was no surgery for 3 years after that. By then, he gave her six months. She made it another 21/2 years. There weren't many healthy days there. I would be singing from the rooftops if he had cared enough to do the right thing the first time, no matter how sick the chemo would have made her. I don't know why she didn't go somewhere else. I don't know how he made her feel when he told her not to worry about it. I wish I did.
So do I think these parents are criminal for trying to avoid a treatment that, while it may suck, works? You bet your ass.

 

Those doctors are still out there and a few of them treated my mom last year. "Don't worry about the pain down there, don't worry, they're probably just fibrous tumors." Then they opened her up for a hysterectomy b/c nobody was intelligent enough to think that maybe this was something fucked up and rare, not a Joe Blow hysterectomy.

Opening up hastened the spread. Then they told her to wait two months for a follow-up CT Scan on her lungs to see if the spot there was just scar tissue or something more sinister. It was something more sinister. Then they gave her six weeks of chemo that didn't do a fucking thing as the cancer spread like wildfire. It took her being unable to sit down or lay down before they took her in for another CT Scan that showed guess what, tumors on her ass and everywhere else.

So yeah. Those fucking criminals still exist, and those fucking criminals killed my Mom. So fuck them.

And I never said the parents weren't criminals either. But they're not nearly as criminal or evil as many of the people providing the so-called help, though.

 

That sucks. I feel your pain.

 

Same here. I said it before, but it is absolutely worth repeating. I'm very sorry for your loss, BYH. Unfortunately, I've seen up close just how horrible it can be too many times.

I wouldn't presume to say that I can understand your frustration, but my wife probably does. Her father had surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from his bladder. The doctors felt good about his chances, but the cancer came back three months later. He was gone about four months later. Do I think maybe they fucked up? It's certainly possible. Do I think they could have saved him? No, not really. Sometimes, you just can't win this fight.

My father had no shot. They told him he was terminal the day they diagnosed the cancer. He didn't listen and fought like hell, but the doctors were right every step of the way. I guess that is one reason these parents in the story pissed me off so much. Their son has the chance my father didn't have and they wanted to piss it away.

Cancer took three grandparents, my father and my father-in-law from me. I never even knew my father's mother because it took her when he was only 13 (she was 38, a year older than I am now). But I also know survivors. My wife's aunt was one. So are three good friends of mine, though one of them is waiting on test results regarding a possible recurrance right now.

I've told the story here before, but I was the best man at the wedding of a cancer survivor last year. He was about the same age as the boy in this story when it was diagnosed. He has been clean for over 20 years now. A week or two before the wedding, he told me that he felt like it was the end of the journey that started the day he found out that he was sick. It was as if living long enough to have a family of his own was like he beat the cancer all over again. I hope the boy in this story gets to tell a similar story someday.

That is why this particular story resonates with me. Just like this boy's family, my friend's parents are very religious. It just seems so random to me that one family would reject treatment that was working due to their beliefs and the other would rely on their faith for strength to get through the treatment and recovery.

I understand the frustration some have with cancer treatments. At times, I have shared it. But5 while there are some terrible doctors out there, but there are also some good ones doing good work.

 

I'm not arguing, AT ALL, that these parents are batshit crazy and should be imprisoned for murder if their decisions kill their son. This story should resonate with everyone, b/c it runs counter to every instinct of good parenting. Just because I think cancer doctors are fucking idiot quacks doesn't mean I think these parents are right, in any way, shape or form. Your kid is sick, you do whatever you can to try and make him/her better.

And I appreciate the kind words, OOP, and am sorry to hear about your family's history but also glad you have had some success stories in your life. I hope your friend gets good news.

 

Thanks. Just wanted you to understand where I was coming from in defending cancer doctors, because I can absolutely understand why you feel the way you feel about them.

And after all of the disagreements we have had on this site, I don't think I have ever agreed more strongly with a statement as the words I bolded there.