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Father in Greece w/ cancer

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Thrasymachus
  11/21/2015 16:15 EST

My father who lives 30 minutes outside of Patras has stage IV colorectal cancer and I have no idea how the Greek medical system works. I don't even really know how the America medical system where I live works as I avoid health care! He was being treated conventionally with chemotherapy and I confronted his oncologist over email with research on just how ineffective it is for his type of cancer and she responded by simply ceasing email contact.* As things turned out, he has was forced to stop chemotherapy over a week ago, because the side effects and toxicity became too great for him to continue which is common.

I have been doing a lot of research and I want to change his diet to a plant based, oil free diet(I am already vegan and told him to do this years ago). I would like to find a more open minded doctor who would be willing to try more effective treatments. I have discovered that drugs like [url=http://www.lowdosenaltrexone.org/]low dose naltrexone[/url], the off patent statin [url=http://www.lifeextension.com/Featured-Articles/Special/cancerupdate-ltr/Page-01]lovastin, and also Lodine XL[/url](arthritis drug) are promising but not enough research is being done on them because there is much less money in such treatment. Conventional chemotherapy is based on choosing a drug that is normally recommended for patients through large clinical trials, or chosen at random or because an oncologist gets a bigger drug industry kickback for that drug. A company in Greece, [url=https://www.rgcc-group.com]RGCC Group[/url] offers chemo-sensitivity testing to find out what chemo drugs a given patient responds best to, instead of stabbing in the dark like they likely did with my father.

*I know alot of English speaking vegans are junk food dicks who make fun of people who try to be healthy or if they don't buy into mainstream medicine. So here are some peer review articles establishing how ineffective chemotherapy is for my father's type of cancer:
[1][url=http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0936655504002225]Sciencedirect: The contribution of cytotoxic chemotherapy to 5-year survival in adult malignancies.[/url]
Summary: Chemotherapy, is only effective in less than 3% of cases
[2][url=http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00520-015-2931-2#page-1]Springer: Effects of adjuvant chemotherapy on recurrence, survival, and quality of life in stage II colon cancer patients: a 24-month follow-up[/url]
"stage II colon cancer patients who received chemotherapy treatment were more likely to have poor [quality of life], recurrence, and all-cause mortality after 24 months compared to those who did not receive chemotherapy."
[3][url=http://oncology.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2398177]JAMA Oncology: Chemotherapy Use, Performance Status, and Quality of Life at the End of Life OPEN ACCESS[/url]
"The [quality of life near death] in patients with end-stage cancer is not improved, and can be harmed, by chemotherapy use near death, even in patients with good performance status."

How would I find a more open minded doctor or oncologist in Greece for my father that would be willing to try something that actually could work instead of standard chemotherapy which would condemn him to a poor quality of life and earlier death than being untreated? Are there lots of complimentary or integrative oncologists in Greece? Would I need to see a naturopath?

renacentista
  11/22/2015 10:32 EST

This could be to anyone whose parent is ill and living abroad, in any country. I did not read every word of your post, sorry. However, trying to do things anywhere remotely, including in and from the US, is not going to give you any peace of mind. Your concern and love are such that, if I were you, I would take all the energy you're putting into research (time is money), and do everything I could to trael to him and represent him where he is, not from where you are. I don't know your situation but there are things in life that cannot be measured. Raise money from your family, close friends, whomever. Think of how it would work, not how it wouldn't. I lost my father years ago and still feel sad that I was not by his side when he died. Your father may still have a chance.

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