In praise of Poland

I had said Google look at this blog. Do the hospital staff? Or is it an answer to prayer?

So soon after moaning here we received an appointment in the post today to meet the oncologist next Wednesday. Hopefully she will give us the test results, if we get test results then it will have taken 34 days! Remember in the USA it is normally no more than seven days.

The letter arrived in an opened envelope that had been resealed with tape, almost as though our repeated phone calls of two days ago had awoken someone's conscience to check why Jan was not on their appointment system. Or do we praise the hospital for re-use of old envelopes?

Jan who trusted hospital team to extend her life and had felt completely let down is now back on track and eating again. But what damage has those two days of "knowing" yet again that the hospital is out of control done to her emotionally and even physically? Her wound opened today, leaking a clear fluid from the cut. Without the emotional stress would she not have had this?

I had said I would explain why I thought veggies might be more effective than radiotherapy. I am not an oncologist, so please excuse any errors in this explanation!

I have only researched figures and results for primary breast cancer in ladies past the menopause who have had the cancer surgically removed with good clear margins. The argument does not apply to younger women or lung cancer cases.

In typical breast cancer for older women the rate of recurrence is typically quoted in the UK as 22% over five years, conventional radiotherapy drops this to 12%. The absolute best radiotherapy results I have seen claim a drop to 9%, but their technique of hypofractionation is NOT endorsed by international experts, I presume either because they do not trust the figures or the technique is too new to have definite long term results.

Even using these best case figues radiotherapy only cuts the incidence of recurrence to just under a half. (22% drops to 9%).

These figures are in my opinion misleading because they ignore the damage radiotherapy does to other parts of the body, and the increased rate of deadly distant metastases in those who receive radiotherapy, plus heart and lung damage which can be fatal. There is a study underway at Edinburgh University that suggests these effects are so serious as to obviate any benefits from radiotherapy for ladies over 65 years of age.

Yet if we look at Polish women who emigrate from Poland to America their risk of cancer rises threefold. So I reckon if only we could find the secret that living in Poland gave these ladies we could cut risks to a third, better than the halving claimed by radiotherapy. Else of course one could emigrate to Poland. My son will help you, he runs a service here.

I only know one Polish family. What I see is far more alcohol use and smoking. As I posted yesterday they don't get worms! The plus points I see are they take far more exercise, they walk for miles as the family we know lost their car when communism fell. They also love cabbage, mushrooms, and eat fermented cabbage in sauerkraut.

So I cannot prove this, it may be a hunch, but I rate veggies and exercise. They also do NOT cause distant metastases. So if offered radiotherapy I expect Jan would take it, she has more faith than me in UK medicine. But we then add exercise and vegetables.