The Oncologist Meeting....

While outdoor temperatures soared to 21 degrees celcius, we sat in the outpatient's conservatory, slowly baking like King Edwards potatoes.  Our appointment with Dr Levitt was for 3pm... it was now 3.45pm.  It's never a great way to start a meeting.  When we entered her room, almost 50 minutes late,
 she introduced herself, seeming like a very warm, but dithery person.  Each time she spoke or explained anything, her arms flailed around for a few seconds, while she struggled to force her words from her mind out over her tongue.
Basically she told us the following.  Amanda's 'c' was grade three (an aggressive strain, a favourite of the younger ladies), it was also HER2 positive, which means it's more likely to 'wander'.  We knew this already.
She explained everything beautifully and simply, stating how Amanda could, if it were preferable, have a lower dose of chemo and herceptin, or just have radiotherapy, or have all three.  Basically she was willing to offer Amanda a little menu to choose from. 
She spoke of the statistics, successful and unsuccessful.  The positive stats for breast cancer adjuvant chemotherapy were surprisingly poor.  It benefits only one in ten women, everyone will suffer side effects, but only one in ten will benefit.  I was very surprised!  Especially when you consider that we know one woman, a client of Amanda's that decided not to have chemo and her cancer reappeared 7 years later.  How does that tell us anything you may ask?  Well imagine this lady had taken the chemo, it would have been seen as a success as far as 5 year statistics go, but the fact of the matter is, she didn't have chemo and remained clear for 7 years.  This then begs the question, how many women would survive naturally past the 5 year mark without chemotherapy, especially if they radically changed their diet and lifestyle, using their nutrient intake as a type of medication?  We simply don't know.  But in addition, neither do the doctors.  They can't carry out studies where they don't/won't treat cancer patients with some sort of conventianal chemo cocktail.  So everything they now use is based around different combinations of chemo, combined with different combinations of additional drugs.  There are never any 'control' subjects, ie. people that don't take the conventional chemo route.  Therefore the statistics will only ever be based around conventional cancer treatments, sometimes 'with a twist' sometimes without. 
Basically the fact that Amanda knows one out of her friends that have survived tumour free for seven years, without the benefit of chemo, suggests that there could be hundreds of cases out there where women refuse chemotherapy and live long healthy lives.  The 10% success stats, are therefore reduced on this basis alone.  We can reduce the success percentile further, simply by the number of cases where a lumpectomy, mastectomy, node removal has cleared all the cancer cells out of the body at surgery stage.  These patients then go on to have chemotherapy, as a standard precaution, whereupon they are then hailed as chemotherapy successes, when clearly they are not.
I feel the facts and figures further cemented Amanda's choice of treatment.
Dr Levitt told Amanda that the chemo would be every three weeks, and for the first day or two she would be very ill, with possible vomitting, the next four or five days she would be likely to feel fairly rough.  The second week she would be left feeling fatigued.  Then, with six or seven days of feeling better, the cycle would begin again.  The HER2 treatment goes on for a year, and tends to drain energy and bring on early menopause.  Dr Levitt still stuck by her guns, and she was still being lovely, with her puppet like arms still dancing around on their invisible strings.
Basically Amanda is going to continue with her plan to 'Go Gerson'.  There are no guarantees with any treatment, and even though the alternative route has no proven, statisical evidence, we have spoken to successful cases, people who are still alive and kicking, and kicking hard and healthy with it!
The conventional treatment does have established results, statistical evidence of it's success, or is it statistical evidence of over 90% failure?  I've always been a glass half full kinda' guy, always will be, in fact, I'm a 'glass two thirds full kinda' guy'.  But these statistics, the statistics provided by todays lovely oncologist, Dr Levitt were, well to be rather blunt, surprising, disappointing and rubbish!