How to Handle the Diagnosis of Cancer

Scott: One of the questions we get alot to ask people like yourself is 'what would you recommend to someone who just gets that diagnosis.'  And every diagnosis can be different in terms of what stage people are in and cancer, but a lot of times you hear, 'we can get you in and start treatment tomorrow or next week, right away with the chemo or the radiation.  What would you suggest to someone who's sitting on the other side of that desk?

Dr. Charles Majors: Number one, I say relax.  Remember I was, you know, weeks away from dying, nobody, I don't think very many people are that far away.  Is number one, you have to relax.  It took you years to get this way.  You have some time.  So you need to make sure you create a team.  Make sure you get educated on what's going on.  You make sure you get a second or third opinion if you need to. It's interesting, when I tell a patient to get two or three opinions... three different oncologists with three different opinions.  Now you talk about frustration!  Now they're really frustrated!  Who's right and who's wrong?  So you want to make sure you figure out exactly what's going on, how did this happen, we need to get the testing done as fast as possible, and in the meantime, yes, you might have to start minimizing that tumor load. 

I don't believe that you can just only do natural.  I have patients who, who want to do conventional.  Their family is into... wanting to do radiation or chemotherapy or surgery and I ask them 'on a scale of one to ten, where are you?'  And if they say seven, eight, nine, ten, then they better do it, because if they don't, they're going to regret it, right, or somebody else is.  And that's their choice.  Or they say, no I'm a zero, I don't want to do it at all.  Well, then you better not do it because if you think it's going to work, it will to work better.  If you don't think it's going to work and you do it, it's probably not going to work as well.  So you gotta make sure you know exactly what you're going to do.

If you're going to do chemotherapy, radiation or surgery, protect your body.  Protect the body and make sure you're protecting the healthy cells.  And then... it doesn't matter whether if you get chemo... surgery on your tumor or radiation, you're only minimizing the tumor load.  You have circulating stem cells, this is systemic, it's in the blood.  Run the right tests, you'll still see it.  And you have to get rid of what's in the blood still.  That's why they'll usually do surgery, they'll say they have clean margins, and what do they still do?  Full blown chemotherapy and radiation still most of the time.  Why?  Because they know it's systemic there.  So get a plan together, relax, create a plan, create a team.