4 ms·

Just some words of caution, please don't read this article and think that getting treatment is futile. I was diagnosed with Stage 4B non hodgkins lymphoma 2 yea

Just some words of caution, please don't read this article and think that getting treatment is futile. I was diagnosed with Stage 4B non hodgkins lymphoma 2 years ago, numbers were showing that multiple organs were failing, wasn't able to eat much because the belly got so distended, my PET scan lit up like fireworks after months of diagnostic failure. It took around 3-4 months to get to diagnosis and I was miserable. By that time I had read this article and was thinking maybe I should just go home and die in peace, but my wife told me I need to be strong and not give up. The following one year was tough, initially I was carried around in wheel chair, too much muscle loss by time of diagnosis. At first, my body was so weak that doctors decided I can't even take the first cycle of chemo at once. My arms were so bruised with all the poking that I had to move them carefully. Then chemo side effects started getting overwhelming. But slowly, things started working. One year in I was back on my feet, started working again. Two years in, here I am writing this comment and hoping for a healthy bright future for everyone out there. It's better to get advice of multiple doctors, understand risk vs rewards. Yes, there maybe a point when its time to optimize for quality of life and give up, but that should be after one or two lines of treatments.

mbar84 6y ago
Your age?
- dataminer 6y ago
  In my 40s
throw14082020 6y ago
Excellent! Great perspective, thanks for sharing. And good luck with your future health. Although the article is written by a doctor, the article portrays medicine/ healthcare as something that doctors (people in the know) refuse, instead of the what really is happening: The doctors know more, and therefore can more easily make an informed decision. In some cases, this means they're willing to stop early when there is a very small (or zero) chance of success. This article is dangerous, because it flips people who default to treatment to default to no treatment, when their default should be to understand and make the informed decision, which has always been the case. My personal experience with US healthcare is to get a wide perspective, asking different doctors (sometimes in different specialties) of their perspective. This is line with dataminer's advice to seek the advice of multiple doctors. In my case, I had 3 types of doctors to contact: Neurologists, Neurosurgeons (peripheral) and Orthopaedic surgeons, and all 3 doctors had different diagnoses. Only the neurosurgeon (who had the specialty in this exact issue) could make a correct diagnosis. The others were honestly, useless. These are experts in the field, and my health issue overlapped across all 3 fields, it was my decision to go to these different experts after doing my research. *No* doctor was telling me to go to a different doctor, thats for sure.

mbar84 6y ago

Your age?

dataminer 6y ago
In my 40s

throw14082020 6y ago

Excellent! Great perspective, thanks for sharing. And good luck with your future health. Although the article is written by a doctor, the article portrays medicine/ healthcare as something that doctors (people in the know) refuse, instead of the what really is happening: The doctors know more, and therefore can more easily make an informed decision. In some cases, this means they're willing to stop early when there is a very small (or zero) chance of success. This article is dangerous, because it flips people who default to treatment to default to no treatment, when their default should be to understand and make the informed decision, which has always been the case. My personal experience with US healthcare is to get a wide perspective, asking different doctors (sometimes in different specialties) of their perspective. This is line with dataminer's advice to seek the advice of multiple doctors. In my case, I had 3 types of doctors to contact: Neurologists, Neurosurgeons (peripheral) and Orthopaedic surgeons, and all 3 doctors had different diagnoses. Only the neurosurgeon (who had the specialty in this exact issue) could make a correct diagnosis. The others were honestly, useless. These are experts in the field, and my health issue overlapped across all 3 fields, it was my decision to go to these different experts after doing my research. *No* doctor was telling me to go to a different doctor, thats for sure.