AB is  77-year-old lady from Indonesia. In early 2015, she had pains on the left side of her abdomen. Then she developed constipation. She was brought to a private hospital in Johor. Colonoscopy indicated a 4 cm tumour in the sigmoid colon. A CT scan showed the following:

• a diffuse circumferential thickenings of the sigmoid colon with narrow lumen.
• masses in the uterine wall measuring about 2.5 x 2.6 cm and 2.1 x 2.7 cm.

AB was brought to the colorectal department of the university hospital in Singapore where she underwent a surgery on 5 May 2015.

The colon tumour and the uterus and its appendages were removed. Nine of the 27 lymph nodes were with metastatic carcinoma. This was considered a stage 3 cancer.

AB stayed in the hospital for 12 days and the cost of the treatment came to about SGD 28,000.

After the surgery, the doctor suggested a follow-up chemotherapy but AB and her family members refused the treatment. In March 2015, AB’s son came to seek our help.

AB had the following complaints:

1. Pain at the operation site — scale of 4 out of ten.
2. Unable to sleep well. Most of the time lying in bed day and night, feeling awake most of the time.
3. Not much energy.
4. Poor appetite. After the surgery, suffered intestinal paralysis and was unable to eat.
5. Bowel movements many times. Always feeling wanting to move bowels but only little came out — soft and watery stools.
6. Coughs with yellowish phlegm and itchy throat.

AB was started on the herbs for colon and lymph nodes. She also took herbs for appetite. AB’s conditions improved significantly. Her son said, “My mother is doing good!”

AB’s progress was regularly monitored by the following blood tests.

Note: From September 2015, AB took additional herbs for her liver.

Lessons we can learn from this case.

1. After surgery, AB was asked to undergo chemotherapy. What would you do if this 77-year-old lady is your mother? What could have happened if AB were to go for chemotherapy?

Read what a colonel of the US Air Force and Sara Shane, a movie star wrote about chemotherapy ….

2. Herbalists are often called snake oil peddlers, quacks, etc., and herbs are condemned as “unscientific and unproven”. To AB’s son herbs did a lot of good to his mother! What do you want to believe — text-book knowledge or personal experience?

3. Often we are told that herbs can cause damage and are toxic to the liver, kidney, etc. This is often the mantra held by the noble profession that only prescribes chemical drugs. Have a close look at AB’s blood test results again. From the beginning after her surgery, certain liver enzyme were elevated — GGT = 48 in May, SGOT and SGPT were elevated in September 2015. What could be the reason? We know that colon cancer can spread to the liver rather soon. Could this be a beginning of liver spread? Or was this because AB took herbs?

Realizing that AB’s liver function was out of range, we prescribed herbs for her liver. Not long afterwards, her liver function enzymes were back to normal. If herbs damage the liver, taking more herbs means more damage done to the liver, right? You don’t need to go to a university to understand this logic. But in this case AB’s liver became better not worse.

4. In May 2015, before taking the herbs, AB’s CA 125 was at 38.8. After taking the herbs, her CA 125 dropped to around 4.7 and 5.1. One would expect that her CA 125 would have risen higher and higher if she was just taking useless “snake oil.” Is this not a simple logic too?

Many years ago this was what I wrote in our book, Cancer Yet They Live.

Related story: If this is a “happy” story, the next upcoming post is a sad one. A 34-year-old female with colon cancer had surgery and rounds after rounds of chemo. The treatments failed to cure her.