'A sad case': She chose herbals over surgery
June 9, 2009 By MARILYNN MARCHIONE , AP Medical Writer(AP) -- Leslee Flasch worked in a hospice. She had seen cancer treatments fail. Now doctors were saying she needed her colon removed to treat her rectal cancer. Barely 50 years old, she would have to wear a colostomy bag for the rest of her life.
She tried some chemotherapy and radiation, but the radical surgery was something she could not face. She turned instead to prayer, a special diet and supplements she researched on the Internet.
Paw paw, mushroom extracts, pills with names like "cell regulator" and "immune stimulator." Rows of bottles lined her medicine chest. She grew worse, but still refused surgery.
"The whole family wanted Leslee to go seek medical treatment," said a sister, Donna Flasch. "I'm a believer" in herbs, Donna said, but "you don't let something like that grow. You don't ignore it and think it will go away."
Another sister, Sharon Flasch, a nurse, tried to convince Leslee that conventional treatments had helped many people.
"She didn't see what I do - I see the successes," Sharon said. "I wouldn't have played with cancer. Even if I tried the herb thing, I would have had regular checkups" to watch for signs of spread, she said.
By the time Leslee went to Tampa's Moffitt Cancer Center, shortly before she died in 2007, she was in severe pain and no longer able to have the surgery she had rejected earlier.
"A lot of it was fear of the unknown, fear of what she thought was going to be horrible. But she ended up having one of the most miserable ends of life that we see," said surgeon Sophie Dessureault.
"It was a sad case, because I see a lot of patients with this diagnosis, where patients get treated and go on and have a regular, normal life" after a colostomy, she said. "It's the job of the physician to explain not just 'this is what you need' but 'this will happen if you do it, and this will happen if you don't.'"
©2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Jun 05, 2008 |
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Everyone have free choice, almost nobody knows his death's cause.
The distrust of the medical community, research community, the FDA and stewards of public health is well deserved. Today that distrust grows as privacy issues are rearing their head in heavy handed management to save that glorious dollar. Public/policy perceptions regarding those who become ill increasingly negative while personal bankruptcy's rise on a lop-sided economic paradigm in health care. It is unsustainable in its current but the bitter medicine to correct it is being refused.
The patient centric approach to health care, research that remove the disincentives which exist today is mandatory and will save those dollars in providing standard care absent for all too many now. It will be a herculean effort to restore trust and confidence in health care with a massive shift from a market driven solution exacted in its extreme for decades.
This writer is dubious it will occur and the sheeple will follow without education or experience as a guide.
Economics, MBAs, insurers will continue dictating medical care for which they now have a glorious example of how effective they have been; their degrees which do not require the silly philosophical "first do no harm" when dollars are at stake.
Now the choices should be expanded to include safe, quick, painless, affordable and accessible euthanasia clinics. Lets be sure to include massive ad campaigns to fuel the competition for the best ones "as seen on TV".
Right...because the supplement producers aren't after your money. Why do you even visit a science blog when you don't believe the findings of science? Supplements are not supported by scientific evidence.
accelerated mitosies could be programmed to permit overall life spans with the cancer under control. Tumors will SHRINK if cooled! Cell malfunctions, and/or cell FUNCTIONS OCCUR AT CERTAIN TEMPERATURES
She should have smoked dope.