For Yang Li (not her real name), "cancer metastasis" is one of her most feared words, because her father died of liver cancer metastasis when she was 15 years old. However, something unfortunate happened.
On May 25, 2017, Yang Li accompanied her mother to a hospital in the city for examination, because her mother's chest pain had not been resolved for more than a week.
However, in this exam, she was struck by a thunderbolt on a sunny day. She learned from chest ct and subsequent pathological biopsies that "small cell lung cancer is advanced with multiple intracranial metastases."
Seeing the words in the report, Yang Li only felt a physical blow, and tears poured out without controversy - my mother is only 53 years old, and if my mother leaves me, I will not have the closest person in the world.
At the doctor's suggestion, Yang Li agreed to her mother's genetic testing to see if there were possible conditions for taking targeted drugs.
In the process of waiting for the report, Yang Li was anxious and uneasy, feeling that life had never been so long and difficult as it is now, because she learned from the doctor that if the gene did not have mutations, then targeted therapy could not be carried out, and Yang Li did not want her mother to receive that kind of terrible chemotherapy.
It just so happens that everything you're afraid of comes, and there's no mutation in the genes. The hope of targeted drugs was suddenly shattered, and Yang Li's mother could only receive chemotherapy, but Yang Li was full of worries about whether her mother could successfully complete all chemotherapy and whether her body could withstand the side effects of chemotherapy. For the next two days, Yang Li looked around for a way. Finally, after watching a lot of patients' sharing, she realized that chemotherapy combined with TCM treatment may be the most appropriate. At least for them, TCM intervention can give them more hope.
After coming to the clinic, I read all the examination reports of Yang Li's mother, asked for all the information, and I gave the following suggestions:
At the same time as chemotherapy, traditional Chinese medicine is used as an adjuvant therapy to reduce the toxicity of chemotherapy drugs and improve the efficacy.
Symptoms include mental fatigue, cough, chest and rib pain, phlegm, purple lips, dry mouth, constipation, dark red tongue, and lichen yellow. The dialectic is lung depression and sputum stasis, and the treatment method is to clear the lungs and dissolve phlegm, dissolve stasis and scatter knots.
Prescription: Coix seeds, winter melon seeds, oysters, cat's claw grass, shougong, etc. , one dose daily, decoction. The chemotherapy regimen is 2 cycles of the EP regimen.
During this period, drugs are added or subtracted according to the improvement of symptoms and the review.
On July 23, 2017, the chest CT was reviewed, and the lesion did not change significantly from before. After that, there was no chemotherapy, and it was treated with traditional Chinese medicine.
By June 25, 2019, a chest CT review showed that multiple metastases from both lungs were treated with much the same as before, with multiple metastases intracranial. Compared to previous situations, the situation has remained stable with no further progress.
On June 28, 2019, the whole brain received palliative radiotherapy, during which he was still undergoing TCM treatment.
On September 4, 2019, the chest CT was reviewed, suggesting: (1) After radiation therapy for multiple metastatic lung cancer in both lungs, the lesion near the mediastinum of the right upper lung was slightly larger than before the operation, and the remaining lung metastases were roughly the same as before the operation; (2) the multiple intracranial metastases were smaller than before.
On September 11 and October 10, 2019, DP regimen chemotherapy was carried out, and Chinese medicines were used during the period, and the chemotherapy process was smooth and there were no obvious side effects.
After that, the formula of traditional Chinese medicine is changed, and anti-cancer drugs such as centipedes and curcuma are added, and regularly reviewed and added or subtracted with evidence. As of now, ct re-examinations have shown that the lesions are roughly the same as before and there is no progression.
From the advanced stage of lung cancer, intracranial multiple metastasis to the present, Yang Li's mother is still alive and has been alive for more than 4 years. At present, her physical strength, mental and appetite are no different from normal people - this is another successful case of survival with tumors.