View Full Version : I don't wanna think about it...
I just wanted to say I think instead of trying to find cures for deseases, they should be trying to find preventatives. I'd like to know what you think about this.
Example:
My first born granddaughter Alana had cancer. It's called Neuroblastoma. I'd never heard of this cancer before. It is supposed to attack more male children than female. It's very hard to get rid of unless the baby is under one, then they have a chance to survive it. After the age of one, you can almost forget it...your child/grandchild is going to die.
The Christmas of 2004, Shannon (my youngest daughter) brought Alana to have Christmas with me and Ralph. I noticed a bump on her head. I asked Shannon what had happened, as I thought she'd jumped off the bed. She said she didn't know. I was like ok...how long has it been there? She said about 2 weeks. I was like holy shit! You shoulda took her to the doctor!
So, Shannon has no insurance. I told my oldest daughter Ami to go with Ralph and take the child to the doctor. I stayed home with the baby Jesse.
They came back, and said the doctor said it was ok. So the next day I get a call from the doctor and he says we have to go to the Children's Hospital. There they told us it was cancer.
To make a very long story short (too late I know *laugh*) she died 5 days after her 4th birthday.
I think instead of trying to fix something that's broken, doctors should be boning up on their mechanical skills and making sure it doesn't get broken to start with.
What are your thoughts?
Trilobite
05-20-2007, 02:58 AM
It's very hard to prevent cancer. Even something as painfully obvous as a bump can be mis-interperated. Granted, the doctors should have known right away what it was. But they would have had no way to prevent it from happening in the first place. There's nobody to blame but nature for this one. Though, I don't know the whole story. I don't know if the cancer had been discovered before the first year.
Well I see that Shannon doesn't have insurance, but shouldn't MEdicare help her? Seeing how the baby is still young and all...
Well, scientists and the like are trying to find a cure for cancer, but I believe doctors and everyone else should try to find a cure.. The United States has a ton of money, and I don't know why they're not trying to find cures for diseases such as cancer and the like. It's not funny nomore, people are dieing on a daily basis because of cancer and such.
That's messed up though, doctors shouldn't make big mistakes like that. Lumps and the like are usually signs of cancer. I'm no doctor, but I know some of the signs.
The statistics on adults going into remission are alot better than children.
The doctor knew what it was right away. They got to the doctor's office late, then he had an emergency at the hospital. That's why I got the phone call. If you knew Ralph, you woulda called me to.
The first day we were at the hospital in Birmingham we were told she was at stage 4, and prolly wouldn't survive. Ralph had a meltdown and became useless. I sat there, asked the doctor to repeat what she'd just said, then began asking questions. I wrote down everything.
That next day they began chemo. Shannon stayed in Mobile for a week, working and watching Jesse. I made all the decisions. At the time there was a chemo that was very experimental. I was asked if I wanted Alana to have it. They'd used it a time or two and with "good" results. I said yes.
Shannon did have medicare cpvr, but the cost of the hospital stay, the cost of the chemo, the cost of the radiation is really high. Medicare is provided by the state of course. Alabama is not as rich as say Vermont. The bills were paid, not timely. Hospitals can be real bitches when it comes to their money.
My innitial question was: Instead of finding cures for such things, don't you think the doctors should be trying to find ways of prevention?
Patrick
05-20-2007, 12:49 PM
With all the money the United States has, and the manpower, we should definitly be investing a ton more into both prevention and treatment of all types of cancers and other diseases that we don't understand much. I just don't understand how our scientists haven't really made much progress yet...only thing that comes to mind is they need more money. I'm sure if we spent the $427,389,000,000 that has gone to the iraqi war into research for disease, a lot of progress would have been made.
I have to say I agree with that.
I also think if you already have a disease, then it should be treated.
However, for future generations, we should also be highly developing preventive medicines so that we don't get an illness.
Patrick
05-20-2007, 09:00 PM
The answer is in stem cells ;)
Shannon did have medicare cpvr, but the cost of the hospital stay, the cost of the chemo, the cost of the radiation is really high. Medicare is provided by the state of course. Alabama is not as rich as say Vermont. The bills were paid, not timely. Hospitals can be real bitches when it comes to their money.
Oh, I understand now. So medicare covered it all, but it took a lot of time?
My innitial question was: Instead of finding cures for such things, don't you think the doctors should be trying to find ways of prevention?
They should try both, don't we have enough doctors in the world today? Some could be looking into cures while others try to develop preventions.
Yes it did. She had a chemo say in Feb. They finally paid it in July. During the time this was going on, Ralph and I had to speak to the head of the payment dept. explaining to them that it was not our responsibility to pay, and since it was medicare it was all on the state.
I agree. Both is required. But there is no one looking into prevention. I wanna know why that is. I asked my congressman, governor, and the legislatures, and no one had an answer. I asked if there was a way they could alot so much money into this...the answer was no. Not without a bill being passed.
How much does that suck?
A LOT!
Well, I was watching the news this morning and a doctor was on the show talking about cancer and apparently there's a few preventions coming out. They're trying hard, he was talking about something but I don't remember what he said and the key that they're trying to do right now is preventing the cancer. He also said something about moving some type of cells where the cancer cells are and it'll kill them.
That's fantastic progress then.
They now have a vaccination for cervical cancer, and are working on a good few more.
The problem WITH cancer is that it is a massively broad based term for a wide range of things. The definition of cancer is an over-multiplication of cells in the body, one of the reasons TREATING it is so hard. The cells are your own body cells, but just won't stop replicating.
In order to prevent it, we need to find out WHY this happens, the problem is, we don't know that in all cases. It can be caused by a bump, by genetic factors, can just happen with no obvious reason at all. Until the whole range of cancers can be mapped with reasons then we have a long way to go.
On a personal basis I am so terribly sorry for your loss. I have lost several family members myself and had some pretty major scares to do with this disease, I know how it feels. I hope as much as you do it is soon mapped.
Thank you so much for your kind words. I'm sorry for your losses as well.
It seems that the type of cancer she had is generic. I was told that I had it as a child (has to have been before 9 months old, cause that was when I was adopted, and my mother says I never had that as far as when I was with her), and that it most likely was from me. My own children are fine. So it seems to have skipped a generation.
Oh yes, I know how it happens. I sat down with the doctor and she was very patient with explaining how the cells duplicate, etc.
I agree that we've got a long way to go. They must begin somewhere tho. Take 1 cancer, find the way to prevent it, go on to the next would be the way I'd do it.
See the problem lies in that American medicine is not about preventing new things it is about the treatment of existing things.
The drug companies are also too worried about helping people have good sex lives, coining new disease out of existing conditions, and getting all the "hyper" kids on Ritalin.
The medical system in the US is horrible. If you are chronically sick and poor you had better expect to die. Doctors are so expensive now it takes almost everything to go if you don't have insurance.
The drug companies can make efforts to "push" a certain drug...example...Human Papilloma, the cervical cancer vaccine, it had rarely been tested before it went to "market" and a lot of younger teen girls are developing horrible side effects, some even deadly....if you didn't know the vaccine for anything must contain some of the virus!! So we are deliberately injecting our young with it?!?! WTF!!!
None of that looks good on our medical system and we definitely need some major changes.
xAnonymousx
08-25-2007, 11:27 AM
:(
I don't wanna find a cure, because I think there are way too many humans, and anyways, they test on animals, there aren't many other animals, and anyways, they have a small dna difference so of course, that stuff will harm the animals, those idiots.
Right, well that made very little sense!
I doubt that you would see it in a similar way if it was a friend or family member - or even yourself - with such a condition.
Also - did you not consider that animals get cancer themselves? As a veterinary nurse we have several animals currently undergoing courses of chemotherapy, so all these drugs they may or may not be testing on other animals, are helping both other animals and humans.
It is not as straightforward as you make it...
xAnonymousx
08-25-2007, 03:51 PM
No, it didn't make very little sence.
Those are my thougts, if you don't like them, too bad.
Oh yeah, and any ways my uncle just died.
Its not that I don't like them, simply the grammar and seperation was so bad I don't actually understand the point you are making about animals. That there are not enough to test on?
The DNA comment is also confusing - their DNA is significantly different to make them different species, and it is common knowledge that for most animals cancer and other diseases are so different that they simply cannot be compared - there are very few that can - so what did you mean?
I am sorry about your Uncle, but in your post you imply that you would not want him to be helped using medical science, surely that is not what you mean? That you don't want research to be carried out to improve quality of life for your loved ones?
Patrick
08-25-2007, 04:34 PM
I don't wanna find a cure, because I think there are way too many humans, and anyways, they test on animals, there aren't many other animals, and anyways, they have a small dna difference so of course, that stuff will harm the animals, those idiots.
I don't get it. It sounds like you value animals lives more than humans?
Anyway, over population is still a problem that is far ahead of us.
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