Farrah Fawcett’s Battle with Cancer: A Review
Today’s post is dedicated to the memory of Farrah Fawcett and to her influence in furthering a new strategy for the war on cancer. It is a brief review of her cancer battle.
In 2006, Farrah was diagnosed with anal cancer, a rare type of the disease that is not usually detected through screening. Declared in remission in 2007, she was tested three months later, and the results confirmed the problem had returned. If caught in time, the survival rate for this type of cancer is quite good. If it spreads, or metastasizes, to other parts of the body, it becomes category four cancer which is usually terminal. Hers metastasized to various internal organs.
After disappointing results with conventional treatment, Fawcett traveled to a few other popular clinics and visited oncologists outside the United States. Her personal research led her to a clinic in Germany where she received surgery that no doctor in the U.S. would do and subsequent treatments that were not available in the U.S. Close coordination between her German oncologist and her American conventional therapy oncologist provided the best of both worlds in traditional treatment enhanced by complementary treatment. Ms. Fawcett credited her treatments in Germany with allowing her to live even as long as she did. Many proven therapy complements not allowed in our country are routinely practiced in Europe, Latin America, and the Far East. Among her last public statements was, “Why can’t America accept and approve the alternative (cancer treatment) method that have been proven successful in other countries?”
Farrah’s hour-long NBC television special documented her agonizing battle with the disease. It was often graphic and somewhat repulsive, as it needed to be in order to reveal to many for the first time just how ugly and devastating cancer is. She wanted to make a strong statement that would hopefully alter the traditional thinking in the cancer treatment realm. That traditional thinking is gradually eroding, although at a painfully slow rate. For Farrah’s sake and the sakes of the 565,000 cancer victims who will die of the disease this year, please help speed up the implementing of a new strategy for the war on cancer that has integrative oncology as its center piece.