OTGV #8 - Cancer Management
Broadcast Date: 11/03/2002
According to government health statistics, cancer is the number one killer in Singapore.
It accounts for 27 percent of total deaths here.
The mainstream treatment of the disease is extremely debilitative.
Chemotherapy or radiotherapy may get rid of cancer cells but it also knocks rather severely, the patients they are designed to save.
But cancer patients are employing other weapons to fight back these days.
Hi, I am Chong Ching Liang and welcome to On the Grapevine.
Founder of Cancer Story dot Com, Lee Soh Hong explains the function of her website to me.
"The number of people contracting cancer is on the rise and yet many people are very reluctant to talk about it. And this is a lot of time where they need a lot of help and yet, they do not know where to go. So Cancer Story will provide them the avenue for them to seek help and to cope with the cancer challenge."
One of Ms Lee's new projects is a Traditional Chinese Medicine, or TCM, support group for cancer patients.
She explains why she felt TCM is a viable form of co-treatment for cancer.
"I emphasised that it is a safe form of complementary treatment. I am saying that you go for your mainstream treatment. That is the mission now of cancerstory.com. Through my mother's experience, we felt that TCM had helped her. Initially she was just given a prognosis of 6 months to a year. But she survived beyond the medical expectation. So how do we explain it, you see? Even before my mom started chemo, we already start her with Chinese medicine and throughout her battle with cancer for three years and eight months, she has been on it."
Does Ms Lee Soh Hong gets singled out for being too radical for advocating the use of TCM in cancer treatment?
"You'll be surprised. Somebody just sent me an e-mail a few days ago expressing his disappointment in me. Why? Because he says that I am still trapped in the same system. He believes to go on vegetable diet and things like that and he thinks that I should go straight for the alternatives, meaning the changing of life-style, eating vegetables and organic food and things like that. Now this is again, an extreme view which I do not want to debate it you see. All I can tell him is thank you for your comments. Perhaps you can do a better job than me so please, go and promote this with your own efforts. I will not do it. I can tell you that there's many many hundreds way of you know trying to fight cancer but which is the more reliable way? I dare to advocate TCM because my mother went through it and many other cancer patients went through it."
To preach moderation is also an unspoken mission of a website like CancerStorydotCom while Ms Lee sees TCM as beneficial, she says it won't offer a cure.
"TCM itself will only help improving the immune system of the cancer patient. No physicians dare to claim that they can cure cancer using TCM. Unfortunately, there are some profiteers around who are trying to sell the magic bullet to cure cancer. As word of caution, there's no magic bullet to cure cancer."
Ultimately, a cancer patient's life is saved or prolonged is simply not in the hands of medicine alone.
"Every cancer patient case is a unique case. Things such as a change of diet, lifestyle, environment actually has an impact on the total management of cancer. So cancer don't totally rely on one medicine whether you call it western or Chinese herbs, it doesn't work that way because if a person continue working under stress, to continue to work under a polluted environment, he is not going to recover."
The existence of CancerStorydotCom is just so that cancer patients can obtain more information and not fall prey to false hopes.
Ms Lee again.
"Many times, people hear this, hear that but they did not actually read further. That's why it is difficult for me to tell you over the radio like that. If I said 'oh in China, to help patients to improve their immune systems, they actually give them cordyceps'. Then I am actually promoting cordyceps, which is wrong! The difficulties of Chinese medicine is that not everybody is suitable for those herbs. That's why you need to be guided and you need to be reviewed on a regular basis, by a responsible and a competent Chinese physician."
That is the next step -- to promote responsible use of TCM in the management of cancer.
Ms Lee So Hong has planned to set-up a monthly TCM Support Group for cancer patients.
"And we have managed to seek help from a competent and experienced Chinese physician who graduated from the Fujien University and he has agreed to be errrr Cancer Story counselor and to support my upcoming Chinese medicine support group. This support group will meet in the afternoon of the last Sunday of every month. I intend to set up this Chinese medicine support group with the objective to provide an avenue for cancer patients and their families to share their experiences using TCM as a complimentary treatment, and to seek clarification on Chinese medicine. The registration form for this support group will be given out at our upcoming Cancer talk on 24th March."
You can find out more from w-w-w-cancerstory-dot-com.
This is Chong Ching Liang for Newsradio 938.
Related Websites:
Newsradio938
http://newsradio.mediacorpradio.com/
Cancer Story
http://www.cancerstory.com
Ministry of Health, Singapore
http://www.moh.gov.sg/corp/systems/traditional/intro.do
According to government health statistics, cancer is the number one killer in Singapore.
It accounts for 27 percent of total deaths here.
The mainstream treatment of the disease is extremely debilitative.
Chemotherapy or radiotherapy may get rid of cancer cells but it also knocks rather severely, the patients they are designed to save.
But cancer patients are employing other weapons to fight back these days.
Hi, I am Chong Ching Liang and welcome to On the Grapevine.
Founder of Cancer Story dot Com, Lee Soh Hong explains the function of her website to me.
"The number of people contracting cancer is on the rise and yet many people are very reluctant to talk about it. And this is a lot of time where they need a lot of help and yet, they do not know where to go. So Cancer Story will provide them the avenue for them to seek help and to cope with the cancer challenge."
One of Ms Lee's new projects is a Traditional Chinese Medicine, or TCM, support group for cancer patients.
She explains why she felt TCM is a viable form of co-treatment for cancer.
"I emphasised that it is a safe form of complementary treatment. I am saying that you go for your mainstream treatment. That is the mission now of cancerstory.com. Through my mother's experience, we felt that TCM had helped her. Initially she was just given a prognosis of 6 months to a year. But she survived beyond the medical expectation. So how do we explain it, you see? Even before my mom started chemo, we already start her with Chinese medicine and throughout her battle with cancer for three years and eight months, she has been on it."
Does Ms Lee Soh Hong gets singled out for being too radical for advocating the use of TCM in cancer treatment?
"You'll be surprised. Somebody just sent me an e-mail a few days ago expressing his disappointment in me. Why? Because he says that I am still trapped in the same system. He believes to go on vegetable diet and things like that and he thinks that I should go straight for the alternatives, meaning the changing of life-style, eating vegetables and organic food and things like that. Now this is again, an extreme view which I do not want to debate it you see. All I can tell him is thank you for your comments. Perhaps you can do a better job than me so please, go and promote this with your own efforts. I will not do it. I can tell you that there's many many hundreds way of you know trying to fight cancer but which is the more reliable way? I dare to advocate TCM because my mother went through it and many other cancer patients went through it."
To preach moderation is also an unspoken mission of a website like CancerStorydotCom while Ms Lee sees TCM as beneficial, she says it won't offer a cure.
"TCM itself will only help improving the immune system of the cancer patient. No physicians dare to claim that they can cure cancer using TCM. Unfortunately, there are some profiteers around who are trying to sell the magic bullet to cure cancer. As word of caution, there's no magic bullet to cure cancer."
Ultimately, a cancer patient's life is saved or prolonged is simply not in the hands of medicine alone.
"Every cancer patient case is a unique case. Things such as a change of diet, lifestyle, environment actually has an impact on the total management of cancer. So cancer don't totally rely on one medicine whether you call it western or Chinese herbs, it doesn't work that way because if a person continue working under stress, to continue to work under a polluted environment, he is not going to recover."
The existence of CancerStorydotCom is just so that cancer patients can obtain more information and not fall prey to false hopes.
Ms Lee again.
"Many times, people hear this, hear that but they did not actually read further. That's why it is difficult for me to tell you over the radio like that. If I said 'oh in China, to help patients to improve their immune systems, they actually give them cordyceps'. Then I am actually promoting cordyceps, which is wrong! The difficulties of Chinese medicine is that not everybody is suitable for those herbs. That's why you need to be guided and you need to be reviewed on a regular basis, by a responsible and a competent Chinese physician."
That is the next step -- to promote responsible use of TCM in the management of cancer.
Ms Lee So Hong has planned to set-up a monthly TCM Support Group for cancer patients.
"And we have managed to seek help from a competent and experienced Chinese physician who graduated from the Fujien University and he has agreed to be errrr Cancer Story counselor and to support my upcoming Chinese medicine support group. This support group will meet in the afternoon of the last Sunday of every month. I intend to set up this Chinese medicine support group with the objective to provide an avenue for cancer patients and their families to share their experiences using TCM as a complimentary treatment, and to seek clarification on Chinese medicine. The registration form for this support group will be given out at our upcoming Cancer talk on 24th March."
You can find out more from w-w-w-cancerstory-dot-com.
This is Chong Ching Liang for Newsradio 938.
Related Websites:
Newsradio938
http://newsradio.mediacorpradio.com/
Cancer Story
http://www.cancerstory.com
Ministry of Health, Singapore
http://www.moh.gov.sg/corp/systems/traditional/intro.do
posted by CHONG Ching-liang | 10:40 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home