Antidepressants Blog

Modern cancer specialists believe in scientifically-tested treatments which work in a way that makes sense to their scientifically-trained minds. The ‘best’ treatments are those which have been scientifically shown to produce the greatest proportion of remissions and the greatest average length of life, almost regardless of any other consideration. The ‘best’ treatments are those that are best at shrinking cancers and delaying death. They are not the treatments that make people feel best, nor are they the treatments that are most convenient and pleasant. A treatment which has any chance at all, however small, of temporarily making cancer growths smaller is ‘better’ than treatment aimed at simply relieving symptoms and making people feel better. A treatment which, on average, extends patients lives by three months is ‘better’ than no anti-cancer treatment. These treatments are considered better even though they may mean frequent injections, blood tests, hospital visits, weakness, nausea and vomiting and other unpleasant side effects. Doctors have set recommendations for each type of cancer. All that your doctor needs to know about you is the type of cancer you have, its extent and possibly your age. The same sorts of statements could be made about practitioners other than doctors.

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Thus, surgery has a good chance of curing some types of cancer, but only those which are usually still confined to the primary site at the time of diagnosis. Cancers which tend to release cells into the bloodstream or lymphatic system before they are diagnosed are unlikely to be cured by surgery. Other types of cancer are extremely sensitive to radiation treatment, so sensitive that they can be cured by it even when secondary growths have formed. There are also some types of cancer which are very sensitive to certain chemotherapy drugs, and these particular types can be cured even when they have spread extensively. There are some cancers which are verySensMve to the balance of various hormones in the body. These cancers can remain dormant for long periods of time if the hormone balance is changed (by taking pills or injections or by removing the glands which produce certain hormones). I will be discussing these treatments and the particular types of cancer against which they are effective in later chapters.

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For some babies, the process of normal childbirth presents a great hazard, with the risk of death or severe brain damage. Our grandparents knew and accepted this. Today, you and I are just not prepared for our babies to run these risks.

Generations of medical students have been taught that, in labor and childbirth, they need to consider the three Ps — the passage, the passenger and the power (which pushes the baby through the passage).

Delayed delivery which might lead to foetal or maternal distress could usually be assisted by means of forceps and the skill of the obstetrician usually lay in his ability to manage difficult births and extract the baby with forceps.

Now the pressure is on the doctor not to risk the baby with a difficult forceps delivery but to go straight to a caesarean section.

This operation carries with it a small risk to the mother, but modern anaesthetics, improved surgical techniques and the availability of blood from the blood bank make this risk very small.

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