Treatment complete

Jan finished radiotherapy 13 days ago, and probably hit her lowest point from fatigue yesterday. From now on she should be officially cured, and get better each day. The truth of course is that late effects of radiotherapy are documented up to 20 years later, so we will both always live in slight fear. She also has regular inspection / examination as follow up.

Her skin today was the worst I have seen, probably abrasion caused to weak skin from excessive exercise. I would rate it as mild grade 1 erythema, showing Jan could be described as a moderately radioresistant patient. Not as bad as many shoppers in Sainsbury after a sunny day at the beach! See this table for more detail. We continue with Cavilon for at least another week to continue protection.

Professor Jane Plant's book was possibly our breakthrough....she confirmed my ideas of looking at cancer rates in other countries and then their lifestyle. I looked a Poland, she looked in greater detail at China. We haven't followed all of her ideas, but it has made us convinced that cancer is better controlled by diet than any NHS treatment apart from surgery. This led us to Professor Richard Beliveau's books, and from Richard's ideas on curcumin onto Professor Bharat Aggwhal's work on Indian curry. There is a freely downloadable audio MP3 by Richard Beliveau here, I listened in detail at least three times, it has a wealth of ideas.

We also had two 68 day delays in Jan's treatment that forced me to Google for ideas....I have even been reading patent info on new cancer drugs. I reckon Jan has been in the best 40% of patients with minimal reaction / damage caused by the therapies, rated as grade 1 skin erythema.

The diet ideas are equally effective in preventing prostate cancer, so any husbands out there should have a curry and red wine at my suggestion, followed by strawberries, dark chocolate and green tea!

I will publish a few posts to finalise my thoughts on radiotherapy. I still rate it as a con trick. I found a Lancet report that states "on average after year 2, radiotherapy reduced annual mortality rates from breast cancer by 13·2% but increased those from other causes by 21·2%." Thanks, we seem to merely swap one risk for another which may be even more deadly, most often heart damage caused by the radiotherapy.

Another report in the "Journal of National Cancer Institute" dated 2005 on radiotherapy suggests it does more harm than good after 10 years. I quote:

"Early trials clearly demonstrated that radiotherapy reduced local relapse, with a relative risk reduction that is now known to be about 70%. However, the reduction in relapse rates did not translate to a reduction in mortality. Many theories were suggested to explain this disparity, including a detrimental effect of radiotherapy on immune function. These mortality concerns were crystallized in the first individual patient data overview of cancer trials which showed that radiotherapy had little effect on mortality in the first 10 years of follow-up but was potentially detrimental in the longer term".

WHY DON'T THE NHS WARN OF THIS???? It is published by Oxford University Press, not exactly an unrecognised source!. They offer free podcasts for those who want to keep up to date whilst on the move.

I will document our experience with Cavilon - but in a few days time.