That’s the title and lyric from a Warren Zevon song. Warren passed away from lung cancer a while back. Going through what I’ve gone through over the past months I can’t help but think it was Warren’s way of warning us about the medical profession. Kind of "God save us from those who would save us." At least that’s my take on it at this point. I have not had surgery yet. Have not scheduled it yet. As near as I can determine, when it comes to cancer and its treatment, there is about a 30% chance that chemotherapy and radiation will eradicate the cancer. Funny - the doctors NEVER mentioned that to me. I had to hear it from an acquaintance who is an oncologist. I apparently am a 30 percenter. That’s why the test results showed no atypia or malignancy. Because, apparently the cancer itself is GONE. Oh, the tumor is still there, albeit smaller, but apparently no longer malignant. So I have a dilemna. Is it possible for me to continue to shrink the tumor on my own with the various anti-cancer, anti-tumor supplements that I have been taking, and possibly NOT have surgery, or have less extensive surgery? My doctors, of course, say I need to have the surgery asap and have the tumor removed so that the cancer will not recur. But there is no guarantee that the cancer will not recur even if I have the surgery. What to do? So far the docs are not giving me odds either way. I’d kind of like to know, given that I have defied the odds so far when it came to side effects from chemo and radiation, and now the killing off of the cancer, just what are my odds of living with a smaller benign tumor and not risking the inherent dangers of surgery? It’s a gamble either way as far as I can tell. So what scares me more - the cancer or the surgery? And can I defy the odds again and pull through this without succumbing to the accepted protocol? See, the way things are today in this country when it comes to treating cancer is that there is an accepted protocol. It begins with the assumption that you WILL have surgery. Either immediately or after chemo and radiation. No allowance is made for YOU as an individual patient, your ability to fight the illness, you general overall health, your mental attitude, the alternative medicines (supplements) that you may be taking, or the way that you tolerate chemo and radiation and what the outcome of the chemo and radiation might be. It is just this "cookie cutter" approach that is a "one size fits all" model for the sake of expediency that I find frustrating and hard to accept. There are a LOT of questions that I need to have answered before I finally give in and have surgery. One of the things that I decided when I was first diagnosed was that I had to be comfortable with the course of treatment and be confident with the doctors. Well, if you’ve read any of my other blogs, you can figure out where I still stand. By the way, in a sort of backhanded defense of the doctors - in this day and age every doctor has his or her specialty. That’s great. BUT...when it comes to cancer, they need to be familiar with the illness overall, the tests, the conclusions, etc. That way the patient isn’t sitting there wondering why the surgeon is questioning whether or not he actually ever HAD cancer in the first place. Yeah. You read that right. Don’t let us get sick.