Posted on 05/31/2015 5:09:33 AM PDT by Las Vegas Dave
CLEVELAND, Ohio — Pancreatic cancer, the type that former GOP Congressman Steve LaTourette is fighting, is notoriously difficult to diagnose, leading to a poor prognosis for most patients, experts say.
LaTourette, who is preparing to file a lawsuit against the U.S. government, says his treatment was unnecessarily delayed by more than two years, reducing his life expectancy. While medical professionals would not comment on LaTourette's care or treatment, early diagnosis in any cancer generally leads to better outcomes, they say.
In pancreatic cancers, though, even those who have treatable disease often don't fare very well, statistics show. LaTourette, who represented Lake, Geauga, Ashtabula and part of Cuyahoga County for 18 years, says he was not informed of a lesion on an MRI taken by Capitol doctors in 2012. He received diagnosis and treatment at the Cleveland Clinic last year, which included surgery.
I think that's largely true. But this is as much a case against the government bureaucracy as it is against a particular doctor.
You would expect this from the Cleveland Plain Dealer, which is merely an appendage of the vast Newhouse multimedia empire. To their way of thinking, government bureaucrats and bureaucracy trump an ex-Republican congressman's personal health problems. It's a no-brainer for them.
/johnny
Lost a High School classmate to this insidious disease just this past Tuesday. Rest in Peace, Mac.
IIRC, yes, and he likely died with a cold beer in his hand.
Both aunt & uncle died from pancreatic cancer..
My uncles was especially horrible. He was in such pain, awful disease.
Both passed very quickly.
Doesn’t Ruth Buzzy Ginsburg have it??
He was diagnosed just before Christmas, but couldn't start chemo until two weeks before he passed, due to other complications from the cancer (blocked bile duct, low sodium, then he got the flu).
He was a wonderful family man with a loving wife of 54 years, four children and a bunch of grandchildren.
My sister-in-law and the kids (and I) are all grieving his loss, but feel it was a blessing that he passed away in his own home, in his own bed, with his wife and kids at his side.
I miss him terribly. Mr. Inspectorette and I are leaving for church services now to offer prayers of gratitude that we had him in our lives.
I don’t know what pancreatic cancer is like, but I do know what pancreatitis is like, and it’s NOT fun. VERY painful, and it’s a weird pain.
I’ve lost people to pancreatic cancer, too.
As far as I know, Ginsberg has (or had) colon cancer. I don't know what her current status is. It is (appropriately) confidential personal information.
But she does NOT have pancreatic cancer, to the best of our knowledge.
That’s what happened to my father-in-law. What was amazing is he had just seen his regular doctors and had an appointment with a dermatologist a few weeks later who actually told us to get him to a doctor pronto. We did; but it was to late. There is such a small window of opportunity on this type of cancer. I miss him so much. He was a great man.
Laetrile was the name given to a cancer "cure" made from apricot kernels IIRC.
I retired after spending 25 years working for a large urban fire department. Nearly 90% of our calls were Emergency Medical. A lot of the food fads are stupid but relatively harmless because most people have short attention spans and do not stick with them for very long.
When I was growing up in the 60s and 70s we had neighbors who were vegetarians. After a while their hair started falling out and they began losing teeth... They were both college professors (liberal idiots according to my father) and they still could not figure out how to get enough essential nutrients in their diets to keep them healthy. They both had to eventually give up on vegetarianism.
Ironically, the people who I saw while working as a Firefighter who were most damaged by diet fads were my co-workers many of whom constantly were on various low carb, high protein, high fat unbalanced diets. As a supervisor it puts one in a very difficult position when you witness someone making bad nutrition choices that are affecting both their job performance and their physical well being, yet when you try to bring it up you get served a major ration of crap. We literally had people collapsing on the job when they would have to perform strenuous duties. It put us all at risk. My subordinate who was the most knowledgeable person on the hazmat team had to be transferred to communications because after years of following the “Atkins diet” he became morbidly obese and could no longer walk up a flight of stairs without getting out of breath.
One would think that in a profession where you are performing CPR almost daily on dead middle aged men who have not taken good care of themselves, that one would be more cognitive of the risks involved in choosing a poor diet. But it seems that most of us prefer to find excuses to continue behaving and eating the way we like. And their is nothing that a group of firefighters enjoy more than eating large quantities of meat and saturated fat at nearly every meal. I believe that this along with a lack of sleep more than working in hazardous atmospheres explains why professional firefighters have a shorter life expectancy than the general public.
Protein powder, high protein snacks, high protein frozen dinners and high protein nutritional supplements are found in abundance at pretty much any fire station in the country. We had all sorts of guys in their 30s, 40s and 50s that were overweight and having all sorts of health related problems that were related to their diets. I am skeptical of high protein, high fat, low carb diets because I have seen the toll it took on my friends who I lived with 24 hours a day year after year, some of whom went to an early grave because of poor dietary choices.
So true. Insurance DOES NOT EQUAL care. Everyone needs to inform himself as to health. There is enough information online to get the general outlines of illness, symptoms, procedures. Etc. There are ways to seek out preferred medical professionals, including asking around (including online). I bet that even here on FR if someone were in a desperate situation they could pop up a vanity of Does Anyone a Know a Great Oral Surgeon in Ohio, and people would offer suggestions. So you can seek out where, how much, what might I have, and as long as you don’t go nuts thinking every bump is cancer, you are helping with your own CARE with online research.
I love the Health Share idea, where people of like minds (often Christian but can be just a general healthy and Gd-fearing life) pool together money, focus on their actual HEALTH, and are helped with large medical costs if needed. We just started this year. Instead of paying $2000 a month we now pay $500 a month (in Dec our old insurance went up to $2500 a month and only covered 80% after deductible was met). After $1500 self pay (like a deductible) Liberty pays 100%, and you can choose any doctor or hospital you wish. The monthly cost would be far less for a smaller family. $500 covers 6 of us.
Every FReeper should consider a health share. Last year, in October, I had brain surgery at an exceptional hospital. With cash discounts you get when you direct pay, if we had paid cash for our whole year of health services last year, we’d have come out AHEAD Of those premiums.
Amen to that! Health insurance does not guarantee good health. Even going to the doctor frequently has little or no statistical advantage to longevity.
My wife and I have been using Christian Healthcare Ministries since I retired and are equally happy.
I’m with you; I believe animal fat and protein are important to our health. But when you say a vegan or vegetarian is never healthy, I’d have to say that someone who chose clean vegetables, fruits, and other plant foods, focusing on tubers and beans, would be living more healthy than someone eating processed, packaged foods only. The person eating the processed foods is the more likely to get cancer.
Isn’t it awesome? I was nervous. My son broke his nose helping someone who fell in a crowd. We were able to use a wonderful doctor and surgical center to fix it. No worries of which doctor is under a plan. My nervousness is gone, and now I will be a walking ad for health shares.
I don’t know which is better, the freedom to choose our own care from health professionals, or just to be OUT of the stupid insurance game! An insurance company doesn’t OWN US any more, doesn’t make decisions for us any more!!!!
Best health to you.
I suppose one could live healthy as a vegetarian so long as they obtained other sources of protein, but definitely not necessarily healthier than one who has fresh meat and fish as regular sources of protein.
There are some hard-core vegetarians that won't even eat eggs or seafood. Those folks are nuts in my opinion.
You eat well.
Yes, vegans won’t even eat eggs or cheese or fish. Crazy.
The challenge with cancer is that the cells are just as much part of your body as healthy cells. Most schemes to kill disease rely on differences between the body's cells and the disease causing cells--for example, antibiotics target bacterial systems that are not found in animals.
With cancer, there are very few targets that are found only in the cancer but not healthy cells. Because of that, many treatments are based on the fact that cancer cells grow rapidly, but most healthy cells do not. So they target growing cells, and end up killing all cells that are growing, including skin, intestinal lining, and hair cells.
Cancer presents a real challenge to researchers, many of them who are motivated to conduct cancer research because of the death of a loved one.
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