At 23, Cancer Never Crossed My Mind — Until My Diagnosis

In 2022, I was diagnosed with cancer at 23 years old. Here’s what I’ve learned since.

September of 2022, at 23 years old, I was experiencing difficulty breathing and feeling under the weather, which landed me in the emergency room. I had recently been on a bachelorette trip to Vegas which lead me to assume I may have caught an illness considering my flu-like symptoms.

Sure enough, I was diagnosed with acute pneumonia, but little did I know that was not the only diagnoses coming my way. I was experiencing night sweats and swollen lymph nodes, and a 5-cm mass pushing on my bronchial tubes was seen on a CT scan, which lead doctors to perform a biopsy on a lymph node in my neck as well as my bone marrow a few days later. Continue reading

Politics Are KILLING Medicine

(September 15, 2021) Recently I needed to visit the Urgent Care Center here in Front Royal, Virginia. I have gone there two or three times over the past four years, usually waiting around 15 minutes to see a doctor or a nurse. This time the woman at the front desk told me my wait would be between three and four hours. I left, but when I returned the next day – their system was down, and I couldn’t make an appointment – I was again given the same long wait.

Since then, I have looked at their jobs site and discovered they have dozens of positions open ranging from cooks to nurses. Was that shortage caused in part by the corporation’s demand that all their employees receive the vaccine? Continue reading

May 29, 2023: Your Health ~ YOUR Choice!

Reports reveal the risk for strokes is on the rise in young adults

May is National Stroke Awareness Month, and along with education on strokes, doctors are looking for answers to why strokes are happening in younger patients.

The American Stroke Association reports more strokes in adults under 50. One Houston doctor says he isn’t sure exactly why this is happening, but thinks our changes in lifestyles could be an answer.

“Researchers have studied the obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, cholesterol of younger people now, and the prevalence is going up.”

Dr. El-Ghanem also suggests neglecting healthcare or regular doctors visits during the pandemic could also be a reason that we’re seeing strokes in younger people, more often… (Continue to full article)

Precision nutrition and the gut microbiome: the impact of blueberries
In a recent study published in the Antioxidants journal, researchers explored the impacts of precision nutrition on gut microbiome variation.

Nutrition research funding is increasingly focused on precision nutrition, which has recently gained significant interest. Consuming fruits and vegetables is linked to a lower risk of developing chronic diseases such as obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and neurocognitive diseases.

Berry fruits, tea, and cocoa contain (poly)phenolic compounds identified as having potential health benefits among the thousands of phytochemicals studied… (Continue to full article)

How does liver cancer affect the skin?
Liver cancer can destroy liver cells and block connections between the liver and other organs. As a result, liver cancer may prevent the liver from processing a substance called bilirubin. This causes a buildup of bilirubin within the blood, leading to jaundice.

This article looks at how liver cancer affects the skin. It will explain the connection between liver cancer and jaundice. It will also detail the relationship between jaundice and liver cancer stages, other liver cancer symptoms, and when to contact a doctor… (Continue to full article)

Doctors Reveal 5 Key Steps to Surviving a Heart Attack
Be prepared. Here’s what to do if you or a loved one is having a heart attack.

Someone has a heart attack every 40 seconds in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, making it a leading cause of death for Americans. Knowing what to do when one happens is essential. There are steps you can take to improve the chances of survival and potentially save a life when the unthinkable happens.

When you think “heart attack,” classic symptoms such as chest discomfort might first come to mind. But heart attacks can present differently in men and women, and in people with certain diseases, like diabetes… (Continue to full article)

Healthy Food Alert #6: What Most People Don’t Know About Tomato
Tomatoes, also known as Solanum lycopersicum, are a popular fruit and a key ingredient in many dishes around the world.

They are rich in vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants that are essential for maintaining good health. Recent studies have shown that tomatoes can also help fight cancer and protect the heart.

The various health benefits of tomatoes and how they can be incorporated into your diet and how they can protect and boost your heart and help fight cancer and even other diseases.

Let’s start with how it fight cancer!… (Continue to full article)

As pictured above, having no energy, unintentionally losing weight, constant indigestion, difficulty swallowing, feeling sick and a lump at the top of your tummy are all warning signs and symptoms of stomach cancer

What are stage 1 stomach cancer symptoms?
Doctors use a staging system to describe the severity and spread of stomach cancer, with stage 1 being the earliest stage. Symptoms of stage 1 stomach cancer may include abdominal discomfort, indigestion, nausea, and bloating.

At this stage, doctors typically recommend treatment with surgery to remove all or part of the stomach. They may follow this with chemotherapy to kill any remaining cancer cells.

Because early detection is crucial when treating cancer, anyone with stomach cancer symptoms should seek medical attention as soon as possible. With prompt treatment, doctors can often successfully manage stage 1 stomach cancer… (Continue to full article)

May 26, 2023: Your Health ~ YOUR Choice!

Warning signs of a heart attack a month before
A heart attack is a medical emergency in which the blood supply to the heart is suddenly blocked. Warning signs that occur a month beforehand could be chest discomfort, fatigue, and shortness of breath.

Every year, around 805,000 people in the United States have a heart attack, or myocardial infarction, roughly one heart attack every 40 seconds.

Heart attacks have distinct symptoms, meaning people can seek emergency treatment immediately upon noticing them. However, while heart attacks occur suddenly, there may be signs ahead of a major cardiac event, such as chest discomfort.

Being aware of these heart attack warning signs can help people seek treatment quickly, improving the chance of a swift and full recovery… (Continue to full article)

Individuals with a long-term high tea consumption trajectory may have lower risk for all-cause mortality
In a recent study published in the Nutrition Journal, researchers investigated whether the protective effects of consuming tea against hypertension and mortality interact with alcohol intake among Chinese individuals.

Tea is an extensively consumed beverage across the globe. Recently published studies have reported the beneficial effects of consuming tea against various medical conditions, including hypertension, cardiovascular disorders, diabetes, stroke, heart attack, and mortality.

However, several factors, such as milk content, smoking habits, coffee intake, lifestyle, and gender, could lower the health benefits of consuming tea… (Continue to full article)

An apple a day really DOES keep the doctor away
Fruit linked with 20 per cent lower risk of becoming frail

Research suggests eating foods that contain certain dietary compounds – such as blackberries and apples – can lower your chances of becoming weak and delicate in older age.

Known as flavonols, these have been linked to a variety of health benefits, and are found in a range of fruit and vegetables… (Continue to full article)

Drug shortages reach ‘public health emergency levels’ across the US with cancer, heart disease and transplant patients all facing lottery for lifesaving meds

Drug shortages across the US have reached ’emergency’ levels, with cancer, heart disease and transplant patients facing a lottery to get hold of lifesaving meds.

Up to 300 drugs are currently in shortage nationwide, according to the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, which is a five-year high.

They include everything from chemotherapy and antibiotics to a sterile fluid used to stop the heart in bypass operations and an antidote to lead poisoning… (Continue to full article)

Drug overdoses now killing the equivalent of a classroom of high schoolers EVERY WEEK – and nine out of 10 are fentanyl
Deadly fentanyl is killing the equivalent of an entire classroom of children every week, staggering figures show.

Fentanyl, a highly potent synthetic opioid that’s 100 times stronger than morphine, is ravaging America’s youth.

A recent study found that fentanyl was responsible for the death of 1,557 children in 2021 — the equivalent of 30 children every week… (Continue to full article)

Does ADHD even EXIST?
It has a huge and powerful lobby which turns with fury on its critics so I know this question will get me into loads of trouble but…

In online consultations, staff had diagnosed a BBC reporter with ADHD — attention deficit hyperactivity disorder — despite an in-person, and far longer, assessment by an NHS psychiatrist concluding that he didn’t have the condition.

The clinics, while charging rather plump fees, seemed to have an extremely relaxed attitude towards diagnosing this increasingly common complaint.

It is a huge issue. ADHD was once mainly confined to children but is now spreading rapidly into the adult populations of the Western world.

The clinics, one of them working on behalf of the overloaded NHS, were also willing to prescribe powerful stimulant drugs on the basis of this… (Continue to full article)

BIG Pharma

Big Pharma Uses Fuzzy Math to Discredit Discount Drug Program
When it comes to 340B, a program granting cheaper medicines to nonprofit healthcare patients, drug industry innumeracy is only rivaled by its greed.

The recent wave of articles on the 340B Drug Pricing Program’s supposedly “out-of-control” growth relies on faulty comparisons and fuzzy math. News reports and opinion columns often cite misleading statistics from 340B opponents.

Drug makers have the entire commercial insurance and federal entitlement drug markets to reap massive profits. Yet the drug industry remains unsatisfied with less-than-outrageous profits for a small slice of prescription drug sales… (Continue to full article)

WHO Advises Not to Use Non-Sugar Sweeteners for Weight Control

The World Health Organization (WHO) has released a new guideline on non-sugar sweeteners (NSS), which recommends against the use of NSS to control body weight or reduce the risk of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs).

The recommendation is based on the findings of a systematic review of the available evidence which suggests that use of NSS does not confer any long-term benefit in reducing body fat in adults or children. Results of the review also suggest that there may be potential undesirable effects from long-term use of NSS, such as an increased risk of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and mortality in adults. Continue reading

Walking at Least 45 Minutes a Day Can Help Prevent Cancer

A study on “inactivity, exercise and malignancies” found that over 46,000 cancer cases in America could have been prevented yearly if more people walked for at least 45 minutes a day.

The study was conducted by researchers from the American Cancer Society (ACS) and Emory University in Atlanta and published in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise.

For the study, the researchers examined cancer incidence and the physical activity habits of almost 600,000 American men and women in every state and the District of Columbia. Findings revealed that at least three percent of common cancers in the country are associated with inactivity. Continue reading

Most men diagnosed with prostate cancer don’t need to rush to surgery or radiation treatments

Out of 1,610 study participants who were followed up on years later, 45 had died from prostate cancer regardless of treatment approach

Men diagnosed with localized prostate cancer who want to avoid immediate surgery or radiation can safely choose to actively monitor the disease as a treatment method, according to a study released Saturday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Researchers in the study determined most men shouldn’t panic or rush to treatment decisions following a diagnosis as the mortality rate from the cancer 15 years later was relatively low regardless of treatment approach. Continue reading

Top 7 types of CANCER cases are SKYROCKETING since humans began getting injected with Covid spike protein jabs

What could possibly cause almost every type of cancer to exacerbate within just months? What toxin are so many humans “consuming” over the past couple years that so many cancer cases are increasing, exponentially? Invasive breast cancer for 2022 was newly diagnosed in over a quarter million women, as incidence rates continue to increase. Also, in 2022, newly diagnosed lung cancer cases exceeded 230,000, as those also continue to increase. Plus, after decades of decline, now prostate cancer cases are on the rise

What in the world is happening? Continue reading

Our Bodies Respond Differently to Food…

A new study aims to find out how…

Genetics, gut microbes and other lifestyle and environmental factors can impact how people’s bodies react to food. An NIH study aims to find out how. Stephen Chernin/Getty Images

There’s plenty of one-size-fits-all nutrition advice. But there’s mounting evidence that people respond differently to food, given differences in biology, lifestyle and gut microbiomes.

The National Institutes of Health wants to learn more about these individual responses through a Nutrition for Precision Health study, and this week researchers began enrolling participants to take part in the study at 14 sites across the U.S.

It’s part of the All of Us research initiative that aims to use data from a million participants to understand how differences in our biology, lifestyle and environment can affect our health. Continue reading

Loudon: The Origin of Diseases and the Effects on the Brain

Some of the time many physicians treat the symptoms of disease rather than the cause. With cancer, many times the cause of the disease is missing from the mode of treatment. Cancer patients are dying when the cause and a cure are now available. In Europe, Asia, India, Japan, England, and many other countries, a very high-pressure non-invasive cancer machine called the Cellsonic VIPP therapy machine has been curing cancer for many years. Recently, the company got a license from the FDA to use the machine in the United States. This is very great because cancer patients will be non-invasively cured when many oncologists are now mostly treating the symptoms of the disease with chemotherapy and radiation.

Information can be obtained by emailing Professor Andrew Hague at cellsonic.beauty@gmail.com.

Many physicians are now recognizing that the diet and prevention of cancer and other diseases are more and more important. They are saying that an alkaline diet with fresh, raw vegetables, fruits, nuts, berries, melons, bulbs, seeds, stems, leaves, and fermented foods is many times overlooked by physicians and needs to be a permanent part of the disease and cancer routine. Continue reading

Big Medicine pushing women to start getting risky mammograms at age 40, subjecting them to MORE cancer-causing radiation

The United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) has released new draft recommendations urging all women to undergo x-ray mammography breast screenings every other year starting at age 40 now, rather than the previous starting age of 50.

Ever since Breast Cancer Awareness Month was first launched in 1985, so-called “cause marketing” campaigns promoting mammography have only increased. It started with older women and has been progressively decreasing to also include younger women. Continue reading

Trebor: Reflection on Life 10 Years After Stem Cell Transplant

Stem Cell Fillings

A decade ago, I was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia and underwent aggressive chemotherapy and an allogenic stem cell transplant. Though I still have complications related to my cancer, I’m thankful for what I still have.

I’m still alive. This was not a given 10 years ago, when I was diagnosed with an aggressive case of acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Continue reading

Letter to the Editor: Cancer Treatment Should Be Better Prioritized

What follows below was published on May 10, 2023 in our local-weekly, community newspaper, the West Valley View. As regular readers to Dr. Kelley’s site, and to our Wednesday evening broadcast – many of you will agree with what the author has to say – but there are certain aspects that we will disagree with – one of which deals with her guidance and expectation for CON-gress to commit to what she is suggesting – and hoping for. BIG Pharma buys these elected officials off – hence – her wishes shall not come to pass. It is among our greatest concerns. ~ Ed.

Editor:
As an oncology nurse, I see patients every day who are dealing with various forms of cancer.

We should be doing everything we can to support medical research and drug development so that no family has to face heartbreaking decisions.

Recently, more price-setting policies have been included in President Biden’s health care priorities package. I worry that these additional measures could deprive patients of access to future cancer medicines and hope for a healthier, more comfortable future. Instead, I hope Congress focuses their efforts on one of the biggest headaches for many patients dealing with health issues – pharmacy benefit managers (PBM’s). Prescription drugs play a large role in oncology because many forms of cancer are treated with a combination of medications and care. Continue reading

Medical Schools Look for Activists ~ Not Healers

What qualities should medical schools look for in future doctors? Probably academic excellence, experience in the medical sector, loyalty to medical ethics, and good interpersonal skills.

These are all characteristics that future doctors should have, but they’re not what medical schools now emphasize. Medical schools are looking for social justice zealots to advance the diversity, equity, and inclusion dogma.

Look no further than medical school applications… Continue reading

Sanders Grills Big Pharma CEOs Over Years of Deadly Price Gouging

“We want to know why there are Americans who are dying, or are becoming much sicker than they should, because they can’t afford the medicine they need.”

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday paid his respects to the victims of insulin price gouging in front of the Big Pharma CEOs who are responsible and reiterated the need to make all lifesaving prescription drugs affordable.

Sanders (I-Vt.), chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP), opened the panel’s hearing by acknowledging “the many Americans who have needlessly lost their lives because of the unaffordability of insulin” and “the thousands who wound up in emergency rooms and hospitals suffering from diabetic ketoacidosis – a very serious medical condition as a result of rationing their insulin.”

“This is a problem that is unique to the United States.”
Continue reading