HEALTHCARE FACE OFF: COVID vs CANCER

Healthcare challenges take everyone to the woodshed.

Whether it’s you, a loved one, or even a stranger, a health challenge boils down to one thing:

Do you want to get better? Do you?

Some actions send a mixed message.

Between covid and cancer, two BIG C words, things break down, treatment questioned, and imminent death awaits the loser.

Cancer Healthcare

Usually, this is the easy one. Find a lump, a bump, or a new pain in the ass, and most people get it checked out. Most, not all.

If they get it checked out, and it shows up as cancer after testing for ‘not cancer’, the road to recovery takes a few hard turns, unexpected bumps, and with luck a nice glide path to a smooth landing.

I gave a cancer pep talk recently and included it on Facebook post after hearing about the approval of an HPV vaccine for head and neck related cancers. Does it sound weird to say cancer as plural? Every time, but that’s the shit.

The Pepper:

This vaccine is a biggie. I gave my first cancer presentation recently. It was pretty short, along these lines: The medical business fights the cancer; the patient’s business fights the fear the doctor’s are doing it wrong, they’re taking too long, and most of all fight the fear that treatment started too late.

Then I paused for a breather.

I concluded with a take on mental toughness, that you have to start each day knowing a silent killer is making noise, but it’s about to shut the hell up. If you don’t fight the fear of doubt, you’ll break early, then treatment breaks you later. Available for additional pep.

The part about ‘breaking’ might be confusing for the unbroken, those who’ve never been relegated to the sidelines due to a health fail.

I met a man who had shattered his leg in a hiking fall. He had two choices: Either find help, or lay there. He crawled nine miles to a road and got picked up. I had my doubts about the story until he showed a surgery scar on a mangled leg. He lived on, unbroken.

Cancer isn’t a broken bone, but a broken message in a cell that send the same broken message to other cells: “Let’s multiply as fast as we can while we have time.”

Chemo And Radiation?

There are so many alternative healthcare cancer cures and treatments, from fasting, to green tea, to weed therapy; and lots of deaths from patients riding an alternative horse so long that their health fails and they become unviable for the harsh science of chemo and radiation.

I interviewed a doctor (appointment) and asked about alternative cancer treatments. He said a woman came in with breast cancer and presented an open wound, but declined treatment. He saw her a year later, after self-care through prayer, and she was cured. That was it, cured.

This was an older doctor with vast experience and he had no explanations.

Another doctor said he had an 85 year old patient with neck cancer who drank a shot of whiskey every day during treatment. And survived. Surviving is key to the rest of the story, your story, my story. No one tells our stories better than us, right?

Covid Healthcare

Do we all agree that covid is not cancer? Good. CDC reports 121,117 covid deaths.

Yearly cancer death average in America? Cancer.gov gives these numbers:

In 2020, an estimated 606,520 people will die of cancer in the United States. Lung and bronchus cancer is responsible for the most deaths with 135,720 people expected to die from this disease. That is nearly three times the 53,200 deaths due to colorectal cancer, which is the second most common cause of cancer death. Pancreatic cancer is the third deadliest cancer, causing 47,050 deaths.

The eight deadliest cancer sites, shown below, will account for almost two-thirds of all expected cancer deaths.

MALE

Lung and bronchus	72,500
Colon and rectum	28,630
Pancreas	24,640
Breast	520
Liver & Intrahepatic Bile Duct	20,020
Prostate	33,330
Leukemia	13,420
Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma	11,460

FEMALE

Lung and bronchus	63,220
Colon and rectum	24,570
Pancreas	22,410
Breast	42,170
Liver & Intrahepatic Bile Duct	10,140
Prostate	0
Leukemia	9,680
Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma	8,480

The difference between covid and cancer is pretty stark. Screw around and ignore cancer and you will die. Tell yourself it’s your right to choose alternative treatments and you’re courting death. If friends and family, doctors and nurses, can’t convince you to treat cancer the way it ought to be treated, go on down that road.

What is the common treatment? I call it a chemical flamethrower, and it burns cancer to death. The patient gets roasted, but lives to tell the tale.

Hello.

The Covid Difference

You can carry covid and not feel a thing, feel a little ill, feel sick, sicker, then sickest you’ve ever been, and die. But that’s not what happens to the majority of infected folks.

For the people protesting wearing a mask in a mandatory mask-up situation? Please sit the fuck down. Some carriers can go about their lives without any inconvenience, but not so much their friends and family who may have underlying conditions.

From grocery checkout clerk, to bartender, to gas station attendant, my personal favorite stops, maskless customers may or may not be spewing the virus, but they show one thing:

If it doesn’t bother me, then I don’t really care.

But, that’s not how healthcare works.

Please correct me if I’m wrong.