Posts by Angela Wright

rustymaker5 said:It’s funny how we all live in our own little bubbles, bumping into people in similar bubbles and hanging out without ever realizing there are folks living in completely different worlds... right up until our own bubble bursts...
Mine popped just over a month ago when my husband ended up in the hospital with advanced liver cirrhosis. He basically destroyed himself with alcohol, and in the process, he flipped our entire family life upside down.
First comes the despair, then the rage, then the fear—fear for him, fear for us, wondering what happens next and how we move forward—and then it turns into resignation, disappointment, and pure anxiety...
He’s home now, kept going by medication. If he can hold steady for at least six months, a liver transplant might actually be an option... provided he doesn't touch another drop of alcohol, if he makes it that far, if he gets put on the list, and if a donor is found...
Both my personal and professional lives have fallen squarely on my shoulders (my husband owns the small business where we both work). I’m constantly worried about our daughter, who is struggling to deal with her father's illness; she lashes out with aggression and anger, neglecting school and just wanting to run away. I don't have any time left for my elderly parents, who are also dealing with health issues and were counting on my help, yet everyone keeps telling me "you have to do this" or "you have to do that for him" or "you have to do this for her"... while I just feel helpless, with no clue where to start or which way to turn...
All I do is pray constantly that God gives me the health, strength, and ability to pull this whole situation through—to do my best for both my husband and my daughter, and to keep my naturally optimistic outlook from slipping away. I pray that all my feelings, thoughts, and words stem from love, so I don't end up hurting anyone while I'm feeling this sensitive and caught in this constant emotional turbulence...
Anyway, that's why I stumbled onto this thread. Thanks, John Doe, for starting it; everything feels a little easier when you're in good company...

Dear rustymaker5, your situation is incredibly heavy because, on top of everything we're all feeling, you're likely carrying this massive weight of resentment toward him.
Try to forgive him, mostly for your own sake.
You will get through whatever lies ahead. We have no idea how much strength we carry inside ourselves, especially women. Be the woman you promised to be; honor your vows through thick and thin, and whatever happens, know that the universe rewards you. Even if nothing else, your conscience will be clear, and you'll have peace.
Sit down with your little girl and talk to her openly, just the two of you, woman to woman. Tell her how sorry you are that you have to shatter that piece of her childhood, but explain that this isn't your fault. She needs to grow up and realize that you both need to be each other's support system. Don't be ashamed to cry in front of her. Your man is weak right now, but I'm certain he loves you both deeply. Even though he messed up, he deserves a second chance. Even if his medical outcome is uncertain, let him strive to be a better man for the two women in his life. Don't take every word he says to heart, because right now, it's not him talking—it's the addiction and the cirrhosis speaking for him.
Hang in there, you can do this!

Lisa Adams said:Hey everyone, I really need some advice here.

My mom just started chemo, and we’ve decided to support her with some natural supplements. We’re looking to source a few things directly from the States, so I wanted to see if anyone has experience ordering stuff from America? I'm trying to figure out how to do this as cheaply as possible—basically, how to avoid getting hit with customs fees.

Avoiding customs is pretty much impossible, and honestly, if you're talking about actual medication, it’s illegal to import it into the US via the internet.
It's not just a matter of money, either. The internet is a total Wild West where anyone can sell anything; if you're lucky, you might get some encapsulated baby powder instead of what you ordered. If you're unlucky, you could end up with something toxic that seriously compromises her health.
My advice? Stick to complementary supplements that are actually vetted and available locally. We've covered this topic extensively on this forum already.
Personally, I’d recommend Native Propolis to help protect her immune system from infections, which is absolutely critical when someone is going through intense oncological treatment.

Kate Collins67 said:@ Angela Wright

So... I’ve been wondering—are you guys footing the bill for all these sends yourselves, or what's the deal?

Look, here's the deal: in the States, we handle everything at our own expense, while patients pay for services abroad. We essentially act as the bridge, helping them locate a center of excellence and facilitating the dialogue with the specialists there. When you're dealing with some truly rare medical nonsense, the costs are actually quite reasonable. For instance, getting a second opinion plus a PhD consultation at a place like the Dan Faber Institute runs about $500. The only thing they ask for is that we coordinate with their doctor, which we handle through one of our volunteer oncologists. Honestly, any oncologist managing a patient's care should be able to do this themselves without feeling like their intelligence or expertise is being insulted.🙄

Jacob Fox6 said:I honestly don't get where you're coming from because the guy was just laying out a statistical fact and that's just how it is... Your issue seems to be that you're taking this way too personally. He wasn't trying to count heads in the house or anything, he's just aware of the extra risk everyone faces of catching the same thing. So, maybe take a second to really think about what you said... Doctors deal in hope, because if they didn't, they wouldn't even suggest a specific treatment to you, but it's their job to give you the likely outcome, and that outcome is just a statistic pulled from previous cases. People who rely on hope, especially the fake kind, are usually into alternative medicine, whereas mainstream American medicine doesn't play that way. In Western medicine, everything needs a statistic, a foundation, and an explanation backed by actual research—everything is built on evidence-based medicine, and that’s just the reality of it... Whether one specific case ends up fitting into that larger percentage or not, only time will tell...

What you're calling arrogance is actually just the core of modern medicine, and honestly, that’s what we call expertise... if that doesn't sit right with you, then maybe you shouldn't be looking for treatment from the hard sciences at all...

Sorry, but you're wrong. I used to hold that exact same view until I actually started digging into the subject, specifically regarding malignant diseases.
I honestly believe the ego trip among doctors is massive. We have people being sent from Miami to New York City with botched sarcomas or completely incorrect diagnoses because specialists aren't communicating with one another. They know perfectly well that at Mayo Clinic, there are only two or three specialists who actually handle those types of tumors. But once things get complicated, they ship them off... and by then, naturally, any shred of hope has been stripped away.
But I am going to say it for the hundredth time: the real problem is how nothing is communicated to the parents. Instead of getting clear, actionable data, they get stress shoved in their faces far too late to even look for other options. There is a world of difference between the two approaches.

Kate Collins67 said:I honestly don't follow you. Half the time, everyone is preaching about how the patient has a "right to know" this and that.
But now, if I were to look a patient in the eye and tell them—based on my actual medical expertise—that they have maybe six months left to live and that I don't even know of a treatment that could change that outcome, suddenly that's considered wrong too.
I just don't get what exactly you're looking for here.
And frankly, I don't see why you'd bother getting someone banned over this; personally, I don't take offense that easily.

They have a right to know while there's still time to hunt for other options! Are you really so numb from being in that profession that you can't grasp basic logic or follow a simple analogy after reading through this thread? Every single day at our foundation, we take in medical records from people who have been written off, and we send them abroad to get second opinions at top-tier clinics. And don't even get me started on rare tumors that nobody in our local medical establishment has the expertise to handle. We're talking about kids suffering from things like sarcomas. When we look overseas, we get a massive influx of options and different ways to approach treatment. You wouldn't believe it—many people who were essentially given up on here end up seeing results that blow your mind, once the protocols actually manage to fight their way through our healthcare system.
You won't get that kind of honesty from the doctors here. They won't say, "I don't know, I haven't seen this before, but you should talk to Dr. Smith." It's all about ego and prestige. They'd rather rob a patient of a chance to extend their life—a chance that might mean the entire world to someone—just so they don't look "weak" in front of their colleagues.

Kate Collins67 said:Look, you’re digging really deep into the complexities here, so let me just pose a simple question to you.
You're a doctor and you have a patient—a child—with an incurable tumor involving metastases, requiring ongoing palliative care. You tell the parents their child has a metastatic tumor. After that step, I want to hear how you would proceed, broken down into a few points, if you please.

No, I was being very straightforward. You're over-philosophizing the whole thing.

I'll say it again: the diagnosis hasn't even been finalized yet, so it's a perfectly logical question to ask how anyone can claim something is "incurable" at this stage.
The core issue isn't the medicine; it's that the doctor didn't actually communicate anything useful. Instead of being a clumsy gatekeeper just trying to fish for info, a professional would have brought the family into a room and explained the specific situation with dignity and professionalism.

How would I handle it? I don't know, because I'm not a parent. But I can tell you exactly how I handled it when my own mother received her diagnosis.
I took the tissue samples and sent them off to get a second opinion from a pathologist in Houston.
Once I had that second opinion in hand, I did everything within my power to stay calm and take action. In my mother's case, however, the diagnosis was delivered within a standard timeframe, so I wasn't robbed of the chance to seek out that second opinion.
We were told that once a recurrence happens, you can't continue with the first or second line of therapy since there was a response earlier. We didn't find that out until she had already hit the terminal stage—three months too late... ring any bells?😳

Kate Collins67 said:Look, she wouldn't be the first person to feel that way, but let's be real—it wouldn't change the outcome. People say hope is the last thing to die, sure, but I don't know... personally, I can't stomach giving someone false hope. Unless, of course, I can see right in front of me that the patient physically can't handle the truth.

You know what? I’m going to be incredibly rude just so I can get banned for it.😠

I want you to tell me how you'd feel when one of your own gets sick—and based on the medical data we see every day, there's a massive chance that'll happen, considering one in three Americans will face some form of cancer in their lifetime.
Go ahead, count the people living in your house, then come back and type this again if you actually have that much shamelessness in your soul!😠😠😠
Who exactly are you to decide what constitutes "the truth," where hope begins, and at what point it turns into a lie?!
That kind of arrogance is clearly your specialty, yet when it comes time to actually be bold and demand better working conditions, you suddenly vanish because you're too terrified of getting fired...😳

Kate Collins67 said:Look, if they had just looked at this through a strictly professional lens—I mean, if there was actually a dedicated facility equipped to handle palliative care—he probably wouldn't have been sitting in a hospital bed for three months in the first place. But no, instead, someone decided to pull the "humanitarian" card, and then, once they finally let him go, they still got dragged through the mud for it...

Everyone keeps asking the same question: "Do you have somewhere to put the patient?" 🙄 🙄 🙄 Please, for the love of God, point me toward a hospital that actually operates like that—one where I can call them up the second a terminal illness hits me and they’ll just take me in immediately.
Don't give me that nonsense. I've been neck-deep in this reality through my work with cancer advocacy groups. You want to talk about humanity? Is that the same brand of "humanity" we're supposed to believe in here? Don't insult my intelligence. 😳

Kate Collins67 said:And look, if that’s what they actually told them, then honestly, there isn't much else to add. You could maybe rephrase it to sound even more brutal, but that's really it.

Either you don't have kids, you're emotionally stunted, or you're just plain malicious.🤷

For heaven's sake, 👎

I want to know every single microscopic detail about my dog's health whenever we visit the vet—so don't even get me started on talking about a biological child. I would tear through every living clinical study in existence if it meant saving their life. You're stripping people of their chance to fight, regardless of how confident some doctor might feel about a grim prognosis.
If we're being pragmatic, why on earth were they keeping him in a hospital bed for three months if the kid is supposedly destined for palliative care? It’s just draining the budget for someone who actually has a fighting chance.
The whole thing is absolute bullshit from top to bottom.

Kate Collins67 said:As for me? Medicine was never even on my radar as a choice—it just sort of... happened. By pure accident, really.

Life's messy like that. 🧐

Kate Collins67 said:Since we’re already going down this rabbit hole about rights versus responsibilities, what do you think about Article 69 of the Constitution:
....
Every individual is obligated, within the scope of their authority and activities, to devote special care to the protection of human health, nature, and the human environment.

By that logic—if we’re being literal—it’s a patient's duty to quit smoking, it’s their duty to stay sober, it’s their duty to lose weight, and so on and so forth...

The thing is, you all seem to have a massive list of obligations, yet you barely bother to fulfill any of them—but suddenly, you become incredibly vocal the second someone mentions your "rights."

You're absolutely right. The only difference is that while everyone is responsible for their own life, you're being paid to be responsible for theirs, too. You need to have that level of awareness baked in by age 18 if you're even considering medical school. For me, that realization was the exact thing that made me hesitate when I was looking at medicine as a career path.

Kate Collins67 said:I'm curious about that woman you mentioned during the hallway scene—did she actually write down a formal diagnosis on the discharge papers or some kind of medical report? Because if she didn't, I'm really struggling to wrap my head around the point you're trying to make here.

I don’t have that info. All I know is they sat there for three months waiting for any kind of update regarding their kid—other than just being told he had cancer and was basically a walking target. After that whole incident, I believe the parents were actually demanding a different doctor altogether. Honestly, I have no idea how the whole thing wrapped up. When you have a physician who can't manage to put together a coherent sentence in ninety days—even with the parents constantly demanding consultations and an advocacy group having to step in to mediate—you aren't looking at a professional. You're looking at a total joke of a human being.
I’m almost afraid to even ask how that whole situation with my colleagues at the fireplace ended up.

Kate Collins67 said:Look, I didn't say anything specific, but she basically framed it as if simply slapping a diagnosis on someone and starting treatment is enough to make a doctor "likable" to the patient. So my question is simple: was the diagnosis for this kid actually written down or wasn't it?
If it was, then I don't get why she's getting so worked up about it. If it wasn't, then I don't get why she isn't—I mean, it's standard practice to include a diagnosis in a medical report, isn't it? At least in my experience, whether it's a working diagnosis or a final one, you don't just leave it blank.

I posted that specific scenario to illustrate exactly what poor doctor-patient communication looks like. As for whether they actually missed the diagnosis or not, I’m staying out of it—that’s a technical medical question for the experts. My issue is purely about professional conduct. If you fail to pin down something that was flagged as an emergency—say, a case involving internal bleeding—you don't just dig your heels in. You consult with your colleagues at your hospital or reach out to specialists at other major institutions like the Mayo Clinic. Instead, you let your ego take the wheel and lash out at parents just because they had the nerve to question you in a hallway at the hospital.

My brain is basically two different people living in one head 🤣

If we actually listened to everything those geniuses from some prestigious Ivy League university claim, we would have probably gone extinct during the Stone Age 🤣

I heard once that guys who masturbate end up going blind 😳

Dennis Patel22 said:I'm heading out on a trip soon, so maybe later :/

Right, and regarding those Dabrador tablets—I definitely need to see a doctor to get a prescription first, don't I?

Yeah

Melissa Morgan67 said:I'm checking back in with another question

It’s mostly about deodorants. Which brands don't use aluminum chlorohydrate? I read that Sebamed isn't actually that effective, so I'd rather skip it. I absolutely love Dove, but it contains aluminum, and honestly, the fear of breast cancer is starting to weigh on me more and more.

Thanks for any help you can give me.

Look, there just isn't any solid evidence that antiperspirants cause cancer. Believe me, if that were true, the regulatory agencies across the US would have started a massive revolution over this issue ages ago.
Instead of using Dove which contains an antiperspirant, you could try some FA products since certain ones are aluminum-free, or maybe look into Biogen which uses Japanese minerals. You can find their whole lineup at CVS.

Kate Collins67 said:Look, speaking both as a doctor and occasionally as a patient myself, my bottom line is simple: when I need a diagnosis or a treatment plan, I want it fast. Period. Does it actually matter if the person providing that care is a total jerk or a literal saint? Honestly, not really. That’s why I find myself nodding along with what Jason Howard9 wrote here.

To put it more bluntly—and maybe I should have phrased it this way from the jump—I’d much rather deal with an absolute moron who actually gives me the medicine I need than some saintly soul who leaves me six feet under because they were too busy being "nice" to be effective.

🤣
It’s exactly regarding that first point that people start judging whether someone is a saint or a scoundrel.

I've always had this nagging thought that those "jerks" who actually possess real healing skills basically fall into the same category as snake oil salesmen or some kind of voodoo practitioners.

The American Hospice Friends Association.
They either continue renting out space or they donate directly to people in need and then reach out to ask for help.

Emily Cruz76 said:It’s been going on like this for two and a half years now—this constant pain in my right ovary area. I’ve done the gynecological exams and ultrasounds, and everything comes back perfectly normal. But over the last two weeks, the pain has started radiating down my leg and just won't quit. It gets significantly worse during my period. Applying heat helps a little, but it doesn't actually stop the ache. On top of that, I'm constantly running to the bathroom; sometimes it feels like I have to go every hour or even more often. Drinking cranberry juice hasn't done a thing. There are times when I get so thirsty I can't even fall asleep, yet no matter how much water I chug, I can't seem to get enough. I even tried seeing a holistic healer, but nothing worked. I took Nolicin, but no luck there either. I went to a urologist, did the urine tests, and had an ultrasound—everything was fine. My urine culture came back clear too. Even my blood work is totally normal... One more thing, and I don't know if it's even related, but my left kidney area hurts, though the ultrasound showed nothing wrong there either..I honestly don't know who else to turn to..I've already been to Mayo Clinic and Mount Sinai.. so if anyone has gone through something similar, please share some advice.. thank you so much

The only thing that comes to mind is seeing a physiatrist. It could be something involving your lumbar spine where a nerve is getting pinched, which would explain why the pain is spreading like that.

copperraven53 said:Has nobody actually gone through with this procedure yet?😕

Honestly, I’m starting to have my doubts. How can a procedure even be a thing if nobody here has ever heard of it? If people are claiming it’s "better than surgery," then why hasn't anyone shared their actual experience on this forum?😢

I managed to find a solid PDF that breaks everything down. Click here, then look for the first result titled ALCOHOL PUNCTURE AND SCLEROSIS OF CLEAR OVARIAN LESIONS