Loosing The Breast Cancer War - Part 1

By Chris Teo, Ph.D.
Breast cancer strikes women in every country. Over a decade, many thousands of cancer patients had come to seek my help and breast cancer case constituted the number one problem I had encountered. Most of these women had undergone medical treatments but they failed to find their elusive “cure.” Let me give you two examples.
Case 1
May (not real name) is a 55-year-old lady. Her husband died of heart attack three years ago at the age of 62 years old. Sometime in 2000, May was diagnosed with right breast cancer. She underwent a mastectomy followed by six cycles of chemotherapy. After that she was put on tamoxifen.
Three years later, the cancer spread to the right side of her breast in spite of the fact that she was on tamoxifen all this while (three years!). She had to undergo another six cycles of chemotherapy. Then she had 20 sessions of radiotherapy at the neck and the breast area.
Unfortunately, the cancer spread to her neck. She underwent another four cycles of chemotherapy. From July 2005 to March 2006, she was put on oral drug, Femara. And from April 2006 to July 2006, she was on Xeloda.
Her daughter told us that she suffered unbearable pains. When she could not stand the pains she just took off her clothes and ran around the house. At one time she tried to jump out of the window to commit suicide. Her arms and areas of her breasts and shoulders were turgid and hard. She felt hot inside. She decided to give up further medical treatment and sought my help at the end of July 2006.
Case 2
Betty (not real name) had left breast cancer in 1999. The lump in her left breast was removed by surgery. The surgeon termed it as: T2 No Mo, Er / Pg R and C-erbB2 positive. The size of the lump was T2, meaning it was categorized between 2 to 5 cm in diameter. No and Mo mean there were no spread to both the nodes (N0) or other organs elsewhere (M0). The tumour was tested positive for Estrogen, Progesterone and C-erbB2 receptors.
Based on the above, Betty received the “full standard recipe” for breast cancer treatment, that is: adjuvant radiotherapy (40 Gy in 15 fractions and boost 10 Gy in 5 factions), chemotherapy (5-Fluorouracil, Doxorubicin and Cyclophosphamide, six cycles) and tamoxifen 20 mg daily. Taking of tamoxifen after radiotherapy and chemotherapy was supposed to prevent recurrence.
But in 2005 -- i.e. barely five years later, Betty suffered unresectable extensive local recurrence. The standard treatment for breast cancer did not cure her, and tamoxifen did not prevent recurrence either.
Betty again received four cycles of chemotherapy with Vinorelbine and Capecitabine. The reason for this chemotherapy was to shrink the recurrent tumour before a surgery was done. This is a standard procedure in our country.
In July 2005, Betty had a mastectomy of her left breast, followed by two additional cycles of chemotherapy (Vinorelbine and Capecitabine).This was followed by radiotherapy to the left chest wall (40 Gy in 15 fractions over three weeks) in September 2005.
After chemotherapy and radiotherapy, Betty was put on Megace (megesterol acetate), a synthetic progesterone (a female hormone). Megace stimulates appetite and causes weight gain. It is unclear how the drug can stop cancer from growing. However, this switch of drugs was done because tamoxifen was found to be ineffective. Betty took Megace, 160 mg daily, from September 2005 to May 2006 and the drug was discontinued after she developed excessive weight gain. The oncologist restarted Betty on tamoxifen – that is, she was asked to take a drug that was found to be ineffective for her earlier!
One month later, in July 2006, Betty developed nodules on the left chest wall which had been irradiated ten months earlier (September 2005). This again showed that radiation did not stop cancer from coming back!
The war went to another level. Betty had her ovaries ablated using Zoladex (goserelin acetate). Ablation is a process of destroying the ovaries so as to shut down the production of estrogen by this organ. Though ablation can be accomplished by surgery, radiation or drug, the oncologist decided on Zoladex, a hormone which is also used to treat prostate cancer. The drug is injected under the skin.
On 4 September 2006, Betty had fluid (pleural effusion) in both her lungs. There were also erythematous lesions on the chest wall where it was radiated earlier. The pleural effusion was drained followed by pleurodesis using Bleomycin.
The oncologist explained to Betty and her husband the bleak prognosis and advised palliative chemotherapy. This means Betty would still continue to do chemotherapy to help her cope with her symptoms -- perhaps to improve her quality of life. This statement also implies that as far as a medical science is concerned, there is no more hope of a "cure". Everything that needed to be done had been done and had failed.
Betty was not keen to continue with her medical treatment. Her sister came to CA Care and asked for my help. The oncologist had told her that she had only two months to live.