Revolutionary Stem Cell Breast Reconstruction Surgery

VIDEO: Watch video on Suzanne Somers’ Revolutionary Stem Cell Breast Reconstruction Surgery.

However, something’s been bothering me since yesterday’s post, and it’s bothering me enough that I think it deserves a followup post of its own. I alluded to it briefly during part of my post, but I really think it’s something to be explored in a little more depth, particularly since Chapter 1 of Knockout is available online. Also, look again or for the first time at Somers’ interview with Ann Curry:

In Chapter 1, Somers describes a cancer scare. Specifically, she describes an incident in which she was brought to the hospital with what sounds like an anaphylactic reaction of some sort and was misdiagnosed with what she calls “full body cancer.” Now, I don’t know what “full body cancer” is, but I do know what full body stupid is, and Somers has it in spades.

It’s quite possible that she was misdiagnosed with widespread metastasis from her breast cancer. I also don’t want to underestimate how much it probably scared her. Imagine yourself having survived breast cancer and then, eight years later, being admitted to a hospital for something else and being told that you had widespread metastases. It’s a horrible thing.

Now, on to the story:
I wake up. I can’t breathe. I am choking, being strangled to death; it feels like there are two hands around my neck squeezing tighter and tighter. My body is covered head to toe with welts and a horrible rash: the itching and burning is unbearable. The rash is in my ears, in my nose, in my vagina, on the bottoms of my feet, everywhere — under my arms, my scalp, the back of my neck. Every single inch of my body is covered with welts except my face. I don’t know why.

I struggle to the telephone and call one of the doctors I trust. I start to tell him what is happening, and he stops me: “You are in danger. Go to the hospital right now.” I knew it. I could feel that my breath was running out.
Right off the bat, to me this sounds like an allergic reaction to something or an anaphylactic reaction. It could be something else (more later), but the first thing that comes to mind is an allergic reaction. Indeed, upon hearing this story, I couldn’t help but wonder if one of the many supplements that Somers takes on a routine basis was the cause. Did she start any new supplements recently? Certainly I’d wonder about that.

Regardless of the initial cause, it certainly sounded as though the E.R. docs thought she had some sort of allergic reaction going. They treated her appropriately with Benadryl, Albuterol, and steroids. Even someone as dim as Somers realized that:

I say to the doctor, “It seems to me that I’ve either been poisoned or am having some kind of serious allergic reaction to something. I mean, doesn’t that make sense? The rash, the strangling, the asphyxiation. Sounds classic, doesn’t it?” “We don’t know. A CAT scan will tell us. I really recommend you do this,” the doctor says. “Next time you might not be so lucky — you might not get here in time. You were almost out.”

Why the doctor insisted on a CT scan, who knows? A CT scan is not generally the test of choice for diagnosing the cause of anaphylaxis or respiratory distress, which is what it sure sounds as though she was being treated for. Maybe doctors saw a mass on chest X-ray. Who knows? It doesn’t make a lot of sense. There may have been other findings on physical examination that suggested that a CT scan might be indicated. Again, in this chapter, at least, Somers doesn’t give us enough information to judge.

I am now dressed in a blue hospital gown, and so far I’ve been reinforced by three rounds of oxygen and albuterol. I’m starting to feel normal again. Drugs have been my lifesaver this time. This is what they are for. Knowing the toxicity of all chemical drugs, I’ve already started thinking about the supplement regime and detox treatments I’ll have when I get out of here, to get all the residue of pharmaceuticals out of me. I’m hopeful this will be the one and only time I have to resort to Western drugs.

So what did the CT scan find? This, apparently:
We have very bad news,” he continued. My heart started pounding, like it was jumping out of my chest. “You have a mass in your lung; it looks like the cancer has metastasized to your liver. We don’t know what is wrong with your liver, but it is so enlarged that it is filling your entire abdomen. You have so many tumors in your chest we can’t count them, and they all have masses in them, and you have a blood clot, and you have pneumonia. So we are going to check you into the hospital and start treating the blood clot because that will kill you first.”

Now, we already know that Somers did not, in fact, have cancer. I’ll get to that shortly. In the meantime, let’s take a look at what she says about her oncologist: The oncologist comes into my room. He has the bedside manner of a moose: no compassion, no tenderness, no cautious approach. He sits in the chair with his arms folded defensively.

“You’ve got cancer. I just looked at your CAT scan and it’s everywhere,” he says matter-of-factly.
“Everywhere?” I ask, stunned. “Everywhere?”
“Everywhere,” he states, like he’s telling me he got tickets to the Lakers game. “Your lungs, your liver, tumors around your heart … I’ve never seen so much cancer.”

So the oncologist who saw Somers first was a world-class dick. It’s quite possible. Not every doctor has a good bedside manner, and some have a horrendous bedside manner. Sadly, some of them are oncologists, even though if there’s a specialty that really needs a good bedside manner, it’s that of medical oncologist.

On the other hand, let’s just assume that Somers’ oncologist was a flaming asshole. it’s the worst case for “Western medicine” and it is not as uncommon as I’d like to admit. Besides, it’s easier. In that case, I’d say, “So what?” I’m sorry that her oncologist was a jerk. There’s no excuse for that.

Oncologists are very reluctant to give chemotherapy to someone without a definite tissue diagnosis proving that they have cancer, be it metastatic cancer or any cancer. Widespread cancer could be a recurrence of her breast cancer (especially given Somers’ proclivity to pump herself full of “bioidentical hormones” after having been treated for an estrogen receptor-positive cancer), but in a 63-year-old woman, there are lots of other possible malignancies. What would be used for breast cancer might not work very well against, say, colon cancer or ovarian cancer, another likely possibility. Consequently, the first rule is to do as little as possible to relieve symptoms.

But the first thing that any competent oncologist would demand is a tissue diagnosis, either from a needle biopsy or other tissue, to prove that there was cancer and to identify the type of cancer, so that the correct chemotherapy could chosen.

Ultimately, Somers did get a biopsy. She describes it in her interview above, “They cut into my neck and went in and took a piece of my lung, a piece of one of the so-called tumors around my heart turned out it was not cancer at all.”
So what was it? My first guess, though, was sarcoidosis, likely with a pneumonia complicating it. Even though she’s on the old side for a first presentation of sarcoidosis, which usually hits people between 20-40, in retrospect Somers’ presentation was pretty classic, as this article shows:

What are symptoms of sarcoidosis?
Shortness of breath (dyspnea) and a cough that won’t go away can be among the first symptoms of sarcoidosis. But sarcoidosis can also show up suddenly with the appearance of skin rashes. Red bumps (erythema nodosum) on the face, arms, or shins and inflammation of the eyes are also common symptoms.
It is not unusual, however, for sarcoidosis symptoms to be more general. Weight loss, fatigue, night sweats, fever, or just an overall feeling of ill health can also be clues to the disease.

Those tumors around Somers’ heart? They were probably enlarged hilar lymph nodes, which are classic for sarcoidosis, which can also be associated with shortness of breath. From what I can gather she appears to have had a blood clot, which made the E.R. docs worry about a pulmonary embolus, and she had all these masses “around her heart,” as well as an enlarged liver. Sarcoidosis may account for it, but there are certainly other possibilities to account for the apparent misdiagnosis.

Whatever Somers had, I guess we can blame an oncologist with a bad bedside manner, doctors too quick to leap in and tell her she had widespread metastatic cancer before getting a tissue diagnosis, and what appears to be a misdiagnosis.

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/10/22/suzanne-somers-fishy-whole-body-cancer-s/