As someone who has had relatives beat cancer and die to cancer, it depends on what your relative wants to do, just make sure you are supportive of their decision.
the point of chemo is to lessen your symptoms while you're taking other alternative medications (I heard some fruit from Papua is known to suppress the cancer cell. That area is known to be a natural medicine trove, alongside Borneo) But hey, I might be misinformed so don't count my words.
Where do you live? if you live in western part, i believe most country's treatment is good enough, in eastern part only a few country advance enough (medically) and what type of cancer? the treatment is very dependant of the type of cancer, and also the expected outcome. Most of all don't panic, the patient him/herself is stress enough, and didn't need for his/her family to add the stress.
That's not how the body works. People need to do some research before throwing in any bit of self help garbage they can think of. Ironically, this thread is mostly cancer.
Do not listen to opinions of imbeciles without a clue. That's how parents kill their children who would have lived if they got proper treatment. Listen to the doctor, ask what treatment is available, the cost, and do not go for any alternative treatment stupidity that only has one effect: stealing your money.
People gamble, stock exchange, borrow, ask boss for money and deduct from pay, home treatments(not sure if it works)
at least OP gets some replies. although at first I read the title as "CANCER COMPILATION" and was expecting memes and stuff. jokes aside, good luck to OP and your relative. I can only give you a prayer from here. True dat. Can't blame myself for being less knowledgeable on the topic. Let's just say I know a few who didn't survive and their families who suffered even after that (burial and stuff) well I'm in a third world country where private hospitals are corrupted while public hospitals just lack facilities. -.-
In the name of Cthulhu, shouldn't people, who give irresponsible and straight harmful advice, be banned? Budwig diet (while the idea is actually quite good, and refreshing turnaround from the "fat kills people" madness that started somewhere in 70's) has no proven effect on cancer, but has a long list of patients with cancer relapses and delayed treatments, because they decided to rely on it. Cancer is an uncontrolled cell division. Just it. Simply it has different types, caused by the complexity of the genetic and metabolic mechanisms responsible for cell growth control. Sure, and cancer cell lines that are grown in labs quite easily in pure nutrition media ( ofc without any toxins in there for generations) are what, global conspiracy? And what about vegetarian animals, that still easily get the cancer?
Erm, let me summarize what cancer is and how chemotherapy works to all the people here who don't understand. Cancer is the uncontrollable division of the cells. If you say it's not a disease, that'll depend on how you define disease, but it's caused by mutations in your cells DNA as they continuously divide. (they're making mistakes). This removes the stop signal in your cells to stop dividing, and it kills you by overloading your circulatory system(a bit like fat) and eating up all the nutrients your body needs while not doing anything for your body. So yeah, that's some info people should've googled before hand. Eating a few special things won't help the problems that are in your DNA. Now chemotherapy is not a good solution, as written by a lot of people, but it is pretty much the ONLY solution we currently have that is effective(some specific cancers have specialized more difficult or better treatments) for a lot of different types of cancer. It essentially kills all the cells that are dividing, including healthy cells. It relies on the fact that cancerous cells are always dividing and some healthy cells are not doing so as quickly. It'll kill healthy cells yeah, but not all of them. Now the problem is that if you miss any cancerous cells, cancer will just come back. However, there are so many cells in your body, it gets hard to tell whether or not they are still there. Thus, cancer often recurs but at least it'll be smaller and easier to cure. Surgery is done to remove a large chunk of cancerous cells(malignant tumours) at once so that you can be off chemo for longer, keeping healthy cells safer. Now OP, tell us what kind of cancer it is so we can offer more specific solutions and suggestions. TL;DR Read it, a lot of people don't seem to understand how cancer and chemo works
*Sigh* Okay, as a medical doctor, let me have some words: Cancer can't be 'cured' if your definition of 'cure' is free from disease. Cancer doesn't work that way... You can't just pop some pills and cured the next day. Basically, cancer is a normal cell which through various factors from age, genetics, environment, radiation, etc, transformed into an immortal cell, which means it keeps rapidly dividing itself even when the body says, STOP! Just like trolls. These rapidly dividing cancer cells then compete for nutrition, oxygen, and living space that the normal cells needed for, just like how right-wing American thinks what Mexicans immigrants do to themselves. Hence cancer cell is detrimental to your body. And if it ever reach metastatic stage, which means the cancer gain the ability to transport themselves to numerous location in your body, they could disturb your organs normal function. Then when enough organs failed. You die. If the cancer still located in its place and hadn't spread out yet, the doctor would excise it out, and hopefully no other cancer cell remained in the body. The other way to control cancer was by killing these rapidly dividing cells, where the doctors use the highly unpleasant cell killers drugs which are called chemotherapy or use cell-killing radioactive ray in what called radiotheraphy. Rapidly dividing cell like cancer is very susceptible to both this method. Sadly, cancer is not the only rapidly dividing cell in your body. Your skin, hair, and guts lining cells are also affected, hence why diarrhea and hairloss are common side effect of cancer treatment. It was like you nuke the entire Japan, just to kill 100,000 otakus out of 130million Japanese. It's the way to make sure. The goal of cancer treatment is not 'curing' cancer, since to cure cancer, we need to kill every aberrant cells in your body, which honestly above our current biotechnology and medical science (though gene therapy and smart programmable T-cell could fix this one day). The goal of cancer treatment is to decrease the amount cancer cell as low as possible so it wouldn't be able to disturb other cells, and hopefully, just wish upon a star, the remaining surviving cancer cell either died on their own, devolved into normal cell, eliminated by your own immune system, or just staying low for several years. Due to the nature of cancer and its treatment, doctor never say: YOU ARE CURED! Nope. Doctor always use: 1 year survial rate, 5 years survival rate. Or 10 years survival rate. Cancer drug is to increase this chance by keeping the number of cancer cell as low as possible. You might be interested in watching this. Now about payment. Cancer drug is expensive AF and to do chemotherapy you need to at least stay in hospital for a day or two. Cancer drug is also highly unpleasant and to prepare it you need to be careful since most cancer drug are nukes, bad for your body for the reason why it is a cancer-killer. It kills rapidly-dividing cell, including sperms (it's a joke amongst male doctors in my old hospital). Hence why cancer drug isn't sold just to anyone. Do you want to make your sperm dying? Then take some methotrexate daily. Hence, cancer treatment is expensive and due to the nature of the diseases, the patients would never be cured and could relapse. I often see people went bankrupt from treatment or reject treatment due to lack of money (then they waste their money on alternative treatment, money which could be used to buy several cancer drugs... Oh well). Also, in countries where yearly checkup is nonexistant, most cancers was detected when they reach Stage 3 or 4, where the cancer already spread out in the entire body..... Often after they went to traditional or alternative treatment. Treating cancer in Stage 3 or 4 is difficult since the cancer cells had spread to many places in the body, doctors couldn't be sure if the cancer cell had been controlled or not. Where do you get the money for the treatment? In countries with universal health coverage, the government might cover some of the cost. In countries with private insurance heavy (like US), it depends on your insurance, if you are not insured... well... You are out of luck. You can try asking your relatives, friend, or beg in Youtube or other charities website. Ask religious organization or Center for the poor. They usually had a social program for poor people. But then again, it depends on your country. Got any question?
It depends on where the cancer is afflicted to (brain cancer is likely to be of least survival chance) and how severe it is, but since it's already leading to complication... well the best thing is to request help from people close to you and that relative of yours, refer the patient to a known charitable institution in your area that deals with health,especially of cancer cases,... and help your relative, yourself and people close to you in accepting the worst outcome positively In simpler terms, chemo therapy is like nuking a specific part of the body, which kills the cells at the targeted area...and since it is an error in DNA of cells, it is less likely to be your run-of-the-mill disease that a certain drug or combination of them can act on. I had 2 relatives who died from cancer "returning" despite they was able to fend it off once due to spread of it to other organs... just make the patient at ease and lessen the stress in him/her
search for government agencies,politician for help, NGO's. create a page or post in social media. Dont rely in just one. The more help the better.
Ask him if he wants to get treated first. Cancer treatment is still a myth. If he says no then just go have fun and create more happy memories before it's time out.
idiot... Cancer is the uncontrollable rapid growth of cells... something which is bad... oh, did I forget to mention it can expand to many areas as well?
this is what one friendly neighbor said after giving us some money for uncle's cancer treatment....please let him eat good foods for the next 3 months...
well, I can suggest you what many might have not heard. Immunotherapy. I'm not really knowledgable with the subject, so DO a little research on it before deciding anything. The reason I'm mentioning this is to increase your options. As for the lack of money, you should probably try what others have mentioned, and some more. ( , etc.) Edit: Best answer so far seems @Yukkuri Oniisan 's