Archive for July, 2008

Palliative Care - Helping You Care For Your Terminally Ill Loved One

Monday, July 28th, 2008

Ask most people what they know about Palliative Care and they will inevitably reply that it is intended for those who are dying. Undeniably, Palliative Care is available to support families at this sad time, however their services are equally intended to provide physical, emotional and spiritual support to the patient and their families as they journey through terminal illness.

It is important to bear in mind, that despite a terminal diagnosis, there is still life, and survival may range from months to several years. Quality of life, for the entirety of terminal illness is paramount. Palliative Care teams and the services they provide are there to help you care for your terminally ill loved one and to provide for them, the best quality of life attainable.

It is unfortunate that due to a misconception that Palliative Care is intended only for the very end of life, many do not embrace their services until the final stages of terminal disease and as a result, quality of life which could have been attained for the entirety of the illness is never realized.

Chronic untreated pain is debilitating, it dramatically affects a patient’s ability to participate in daily routines and in some cases takes away their will to live. Tragically, many people are suffering chronic pain unnecessarily. Pain management specialists attached to Palliative Care teams have vast knowledge regarding cancer pain and of medications available to control it. Once pain is brought under control, quality of life will be vastly improved.

Caring for a terminally ill loved one is a catastrophic experience; Palliative Care members understand this and there are counsellors available to help you cope with your anticipatory grief. Likewise, Chaplains are there to support you with prayer.

I cannot praise highly enough the services of Palliative Care, the team, who worked with me during my husband’s terminal illness, have my eternal gratitude. Through their dedication and the pain management specialist’s knowledge, my husband’s pain was controlled and the quality of his life improved dramatically. The silver chain nurses attached to the team visited us regularly and I looked forward to speaking with them and voicing any concerns I had in regard to my husband’s care. They never intruded on our privacy but were always just a phone call away if I needed them.

I urge you to embrace palliative care soon after diagnosis so that your terminally ill loved one and you may reap the benefits afforded by this wonderful group of caring individuals.

Mesothelioma

Friday, July 25th, 2008

Mesothelioma is generally caused by the inhalation of fibers from asbestos, which is a carcinogenic material. It is commonly seen among workers in the construction industry who have long exposure to asbestos. It can also be caused by living in asbestos insulated buildings for a long period of time, Genetics plays an important role, and some people are more vulnerable to the risk than others.

This form of cancer is relatively rare, and involves the mesothelium, which is the tissue that lines an organ. This tissue secretes a liquid that enables the organs to move. Mesothelioma tumors tend to affect the lungs, the stomach, the heart and other organs.

Unfortunately, mesothelioma is a serious disease with high fatality rates. If the tumors are malignant, the survival rate is not encouraging. The average survival time after diagnosis is about a year. However, if the cancer is treated aggressively, the patient has a good chance of living at least two years, and the five-year survival rate is improving.

The most common form of the disease is pleural mesothelioma, which invades the chest cavity. In these cases, the asbestos fibers travel into the pleura, which is the lining that surrounds the lungs damaging the cells, and results in cancer. Onset is slow, and the most common symptom is persistent chest pain. Other forms of mesothelioma are the peritoneum mesothelioma (which manifests in the abdomen) and the pericardium mesothelioma (which affects the heart).

Mesothelioma is the issue in thousands of asbestos lawsuits today. Many people are coming forward with these lawasuits seeking damages for medical bills, wages lost, pain and suffering, and so on.

Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008

Monday, July 21st, 2008

Cancer and the Shock Conflict

Sunday, July 20th, 2008

Dr Ryke Geerd Hamer was the senior oncologist at the University of Munich oncological hospital for more than 20 years.

Doctor Hamer himself was struck with testicular cancer 2 years after his son Dirk was shot dead. This led him to begin investigations into the emotional link between the body and the mind.

Investigating the matter further and keenly aware of the rising prevalence of cancer Dr Hamer began a study with more than 10,000 patients who did not have cancer and studied them for ten years. Each trial participant was screen every 3 months, the screening process involved blood tests and CAT scans. What Doctor Hamers research uncovered was that the vast majority of all cancers (approx 98%) were caused by a shock conflict that would cause an initial lesion in a specific (and always the same area of the brain) approximately 1 month before any tumour became obvious in the body, and whats more the shock conflict would always appear in a specific place in relativity to the tumour.

For example if a woman got cancer in the left breast, then approx 1 month before any tumour was detectable a CAT scan would demonstrate that a lesion would always appear in the same spot in the brain in each and every circumstance. Then upon psychological investigation it would be found that at some time within the preceding 2 years there would have been an emotional conflict regarding a separation from either children or spouse. This Doctor Hamer termed the “Shock Conflict”.

As soon as his findings were released to his peers, suppoted by correct scientific analysis and protocols, the greater German and global medical turned against him and he was branded a quack and literally run out of Germany. Despite the German courts ruling that Doctors Hamers theories be thoroughly tested at the university of Tubengin, the University flatly refused and eventually, because he refused to retract his theory, Hamer was declared insane by a German court on supposed evidence from a Psychiatrist who had never even met him. This gave the German press a field day as they set about demonising him and his quackery. It also put him in significant danger of losing his medical licence so he packed up and moved to Spain where he successfully treated thousands of people with many types of cancers. To try and slow him up he was illegaly arrested in Spain by French authorities, spirited off to France and locked away in a mental institution for more than 2 years.

That remained the position until in 2003 another German Doctor, and a member of the German aristocracy declared that Hamer was correct in his findings and should be awarded a Nobel prize instead of being locked away. Eventually in late 2005 because of mounting public and some political pressure the French authorities had to release him. He is now doing a series of lecture tours in Canada and trying to get his findings accepted by the mainstream authorities under the guise of “The New Medicine”.

Interestingly from my perspective, when I undertook my clinical trial of cancer patients to assess the effectiveness of hypnosis in the improvement in the quality of life, after reading Hamers shock conflicts relating to various cancers they were 100% accurate. For example the shock conflict for lung cancer is the fear of death or somebody close dying, and upon questioning lung cancer victims it is found in every case that within the preceding 2 years there was indeed a fear of death involved. This is supported by studying statistics from the 1st and 2nd world wars when lung cancer increased by more than 1000% in the general population until the war ended and it quickly diminished back to pre war figures. Of course there are 100s of cancers and even more emotional shock conflicts that are suffered by people every day, and it has also been reported in clinical studies that people on anti depressant drugs are significantly lower than the norm for cancer affliction. This demonstrates that continual or emotional inspired stress has a link to the formation of a tumour.

According to Dr Hamer the best thing we could do is to deal with the shock conflict and let the cancer run its course through its usual 3 phases until it gets to the bone. Dr Hamer considers that the 3rd phase (bone cancer) is actually the healing phase, but also points out that the pain from bone cancer is the most feared pain known to medicine, so the same old system of cutting, burning and morphine are applied until eventually the patient is medicated, poisoned and cut to death. He states in his thesis that at this stage the patient is usually sent home with litres of Morphine to control the pain and he calls this “Death by agreement between the patient and the physician, with ignorance on behalf of the patient”. And he also points out that chemotherapy is not intended to be curative, it is pallitative, but becomes deadly poisonous when continuously administered after all other interventions have failed.

One could at this point be cynical and assume profiteering by the pharmaceutical and medical industries, although personally I think it is more a case of oncologists using the required “Standard of care” medical protocols more than anything else. I noted when having success using hypnosis to deal with the shock conflicts of cancer victims, chemotherapy was the one significant thing that would send a patient backward as they were beginning to show and feel improvements in many areas of day to day living.

It is also rather ugly to see how many directors of the big chemotherapy manufacturers such as IVAX have directors on their boards such as John S Reed who is also a director of Phillip Morris Tobacco, but is himself a non smoker. Then there is an interesting chapter in Jonathan Isens book “Suppressed Inventions and other Discoveries, that delves into the Memorial Sloan Kettering cancer institutes (who set western world medical protocols for cancer treatments) where Richard Furlow, a director of Memorial Sloan Kettering, had, according to Isen, boasted that they, Memorial Sloan Kettering, had turned cancer into the most profitable industry of the 20th century.

I am not assuming or suggesting that MDs and Oncologists are not decent people with compassion for their sick patients, but I have wondered many times why the medical profession continues to use so many archaic protocols which have now been shown to be next to useless in their effectiveness. I also wonder why the huge room at Memorial Sloan Kettering where all of the “To be investigated” natural and other supposed cures for cancer, only ever gets its doors open to add another product, treatment, or plant extract, and never to actually take one out and investigate its effectiveness.

Soon after I completed my clinical trails with hypnosis in Perth Western Australia, I noted with interest how Memorial Sloan Kettering had quickly sent an emissary to Australia to decry Dr John Holt, also of Perth WA. Doctor Holt, much to the disgust and ire of his peers had been giving glucose to cancer victims and then administering a microwave treatment that was proving to be effective for thousands of people and, as he stated, not so effective for some cancers and others, others being the vast minority.

As soon as his treatments were made public on an a current affair show Australia wide, and even with all the living evidence of 1000s of people who had been declared terminal by other physicians and oncologists, the powers that be turned on him, up to and including the Australian Health minister Mr Tony Abbott who, probably because of the embarrassment of public pressure, said that the matter needed further investigation and sent representatives from The Australian Medical Research Council to interview some of the cured patients. Ten patients got one 10 minute interview each, and upon the strength of that it was declared that there was no evidence of any efficacy to Dr Holts treatment. Then after the TV interviewer stated publicly that if any of his family ever got cancer he would use Dr Holts treatment before he would consider chemotherapy, the caring politician threatened the interviewer with legal action and then the female emissary from Memorial Sloan Kettering stated in the newspapers in Australia (get this), Hypnosis and Acupuncture had been demonstrated to be very helpful to improve the quality of life in cancer patients. But anything to do with frequencies, radiowave and microwave therapies were quackery with no scientific evidence. This was the equivalent to the initial hounding received by the Australian Vet who proved that many stomach ulcers were caused by the bacteria Heliobacter Campori. He had to drink the bacteria and cure himself with anti-biotics many times before his discovery was eventually even looked at, and then it took another 10 years before it was accepted and he was awarded a Nobel Prize.

One of the lessor known negatives about standard medical treatment is that the apparent cures are based almost entirely on Newtonian Psychics, a mechanical system that does not take energy into account. The body is viewed as a machine, and little if any account is given to the emotional energy of the Mind Body connection.

You don’t have to be a medical genius to realise that if you get someone to close their eyes and think of the most frightening thing that ever happened to them, very soon they will begin to feel the result of the thought in their stomach as their brain remembers and replicates the initial fear. This can be easily recorded with scientific instruments, but is nonetheless largely ignored in favour of the chop, burn, and medicate preferences of modern day medicine who for the most part have medically taken us no where in terms of curing anything.

Sure we can witness amazing surgery etc, but still these so called experts, despite all of the trillions of dollars that have been spent since the beginning of the 20th century, cannot even cure the common cold. Perhaps the simple and significant truth regarding health is that emotional thought creates emotional feeling at all levels.

Friday, July 18th, 2008

Mesothelioma Diagnosis: An Introduction

Wednesday, July 16th, 2008

A physician may suspect malignant mesothelioma in a patient who has symptoms suggesting this cancer and who reports a history of asbestos exposure. Careful medical examination may also reveal the presence of fluid in the pleural or abdominal cavity. Once malignant mesothelioma is suspected, a number of methods are available to help confirm the diagnosis.

Imaging methods, such as x-rays, CT scans, MRIs and PET scans, help determine the location, size and extent of the cancer, and specifically detect pleural or peritoneal thickening, fluid in the pleural or abdominal cavity, or nodules of cancer cells. However, a definitive diagnosis of malignant mesothelioma can only be made after the examination of cells from abnormal tissue.

A biopsy of abnormal tissue is performed to find out whether the cells in this tissue are cancerous or not. Such tissue can be removed through minimally invasive surgery. Fluid in the pleural or abdominal cavity may also contain cancer cells, and may also be removed for analysis. Cells from abnormal tissue or fluid are examined under the microscope, and can be identified as normal or cancerous. However, such examination does not necessarily confirm the type of cancer. Cells found in pleural mesotheliomas can resemble lung cancer cells, and cells found in peritoneal mesotheliomas can resemble ovarian cancer cells. To differentiate between these different forms of cancer, a method called immunohistochemistry is often used. This method detects proteins on the surface of cancer cells that are specific to certain types of cancers. A newer method called DNA microarray analysis examines the genes of cancer cells. Malignant mesothelioma cancer cells have different gene patterns from other cancer cells and from normal cells.

While no blood tests confirm a diagnosis of malignant mesothelioma, there are certain blood abnormalities that suggest the presence of a cancer. Recent research suggests that elevated levels of a blood protein called osteopontin may help in the early detection of mesothelioma.

Tuesday, July 15th, 2008

Monday, July 14th, 2008

Sunday, July 13th, 2008