Faithandpeace wrote: I just don't know how you know which supplements and off-label drugs to use and what dosage. I've been combing the Life Extension website for a few months and right now I have him on Vit D3, Vit E, magnesium ascorbate, glutamine, curcumin, folic acid, Vit B6 and Tagamet. I'd like to add modified citrus pectin, aspirin and Celebrex but he's on enoxiparin because of blood clots (so aspirin is questionable) and I'm worried about the cardiac side effects of the Celebrex.
The supplements look pretty incomplete to boost the chemo benefits for what we've seen work.
Folic acid is a serious mistake with 5FU drugs, other folate choices have been discussed here on the forum several times. High gamma tocopherol (extracted natural vitamin E mixture) and d-alpha tocopheryl succinate are usually the preferred vitamin E for integrative medicine; the common d,l-alpha tocopheryl acetate is not considered favorably, with known and suspected interferences.
We used LEF dosages as a starting point and grew from there. We are dependent on bloodwork for many aspects of adjunct selection, additions and higher dosages.
Blood clot and cancer issues often have overlap on both diagnostics (bloodwork) and natural therapies. We managed to avoid enoxiparin with enough natural components to work out hypercoagulability periods, my wife wouldn't handle the shots well for very long. However your husband may have bigger clot issues - that's why you need professional support, preferably several opinions early in any issues. In your situation we would be adding fibrinogen and quantitative d-dimer to the bloodwork more frequently, for both cancer and clot related assessments.
Our onc is very dismissive of anything other than the treatment she prescribes so she's not going to order the extra blood work or prescribe off-label drugs at our request or help us figure out dosages, etc.
We pretty much fire and forget about those (not-so-)kind of providers. One route is to find other drs with active interests in cancer patient support. We have an internal medicine dr who has an integrative approach and supports reasonable requests - pretty much everything we've asked for, even a specific chemo prescription. We also took control of our lab work long ago, although insurance interactions might be an issue. I would use a truncheon to discuss separate blood tests for those covered by insurance and those not covered, instead of all in one go.
The other common arrangement is doctors in tandem, the regular oncologist for chemo and a cancer oriented alternative MD or naturopath. However, the answers will be different (e.g. cyclic chemo instead of metronomic options) than with a cooperating MD.
where can I find such a doctor? I'm not willing to go the total naturopath route because I believe he needs some chemo.
I think most integrative doctors anticipate combined therapies with chemo.
Asking around friends and family, asking owners of health food stores and looking for professionals' cards.
Riordan Clinic does free phone conferences, and often will try to help find local doctors that do IV vitamin C; such IVC drs probably have other cancer support options.
Life Extension Foundation's cancer naturopaths are nominally free for 30 minute callback consults.
The Lexington outfit has a paid phone consultancy, charged by 10-15 minute increments.
You may be close enough to the border that the best of the Mexican clinics might help if they do consulting, but there are a lot of bells and whistles that I question the costs and effectiveness on.
There are several clinics that might available nationally, like Block.