-=> Quoting Sondra Ball to Robin Arnhold <=-
Hi, Sondra,
 RA>What's more, you hear them from doctors, too.  I have a friend of
 >Norwegian ancestry who was crippled by polio many years ago.  She has
 >commented that she wonders how she can get adequate medical care when the
 >doctors ask her if she has feeling in her legs.
 SB> 
 SB> Was it a younger doctor?  Polio is so rare these days, that many
 SB> doctors actually know nothing about it.  My husband's stepmother had
 SB> polio when she was a little girl.  She finds that doctors know very
 SB> little about the disease, and about post polio syndrome, because the
 SB> disease has been almost non-existent since the middle fifties when the
 SB> polio vaccine became commonplace.
I think it was a younger doctor.  The thing is, he was working with
people who had post polio syndrome.  This was back a few years when the
medical establishment was first becoming generally aware that there was
such a thing, and here they were trying to get as many people as possible
who had had polio to go in to be evaluated, etc.  Mario's stepmother's
experience is very similar to Jo's.  Jo has found she has had to provide
the doctors with basic information about polio.
 
 RA>I guess I have nothing against herbal remedies in and of themselves, but
 >it seems that so many of the enthusiasts for these various remedies have
 >no sense of balance.  There are no medical cure-alls, and some of the
 >folks I've encountered have acted like it.  I also know a woman who took
 >an herbal remedy somebody had recommended.  She had an allergy to that
 >particular plant that she didn't learn about until she tried the remedy.
 >She's lucky she was only sick for a week from it.  It is better to do a
 >little research into various treatments for a complaint first and find
 >out what other people's experiences have been.
 SB> 
 SB> I agree,  When I got cancer, and started researching who survived, it
 SB> was folks who were willing to attack cancer from several angles who
 SB> were most apt to survive.  Folks who used only herbs, and not chemo and
 SB> surgery did not have a really high success rate.  But those who used
 SB> *only* approved medical means were also not as apt to survive as those
 SB> who used *both* alternative medical plans *and* the more usual medical
 SB> plans.
I have only known one person who went totally with the alternative
treatments, in fact, quit the chemo for it.  I can't say if he would have
lived longer if he had stuck with the chemo or if he had combined
treatments, but he did not survive very long with the treatment he chose.
I think if it were me, I'd probably want to try everything that wouldn't
kill me outright but might have a chance of working.  That sounds pretty
much like what you did.
Take care,
Robin
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