“This Is Highly Unethical, But…” Nurses Are Confessing Their Most Closely Guarded Secrets

4.

Here is the most controversial entry from the original post: “If you have stage 3 (and definitely if you have stage 4) cancer, SKIP THE CHEMO! It’s likely not going to save your life and may actually hasten your death and/or destroy the quality of the little time you have left (because it will make you so sick, weak, and tired). Enjoy the time you have left FEELING (relatively) GOOD (not vomiting and dealing with painful mouth sores, infections, and a host of other miseries that come with chemotherapy treatment).”

“If I ever get cancer and am told it’s stage 3 or higher, I will never take chemo (and will only do radiation if it’s palliative and necessary to decrease my pain, not for treatment of the cancer). I have administered chemo agents during my few years as an oncology nurse, and I have seen how awfully sick and miserable it makes people. It also often makes it next-to-impossible to enjoy the little things like eating or being with kids, to give just two examples. Why does it ruin eating? Chemo often causes stomatitis and other painful mouth/throat infections and sores. It also often causes nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea.

Why can’t kids be around? Often, chemo makes a patient neutropenic (very low white blood cell count), putting them at high risk for a life-threatening infection. Kids are germy, so they’re usually barred from visiting (unless the patient is dying and no longer getting treatment).

Chemo is a poison that I wouldn’t wish for anyone. Yes, it can be a lifesaving poison, but that comes with a cost most of the time (neuropathies, hearing loss, organ damage, increased risk for other cancers, etc.).

Doctors will keep giving you treatment suggestions because that’s what they’re trained to do, and that’s what they assume everyone wants. But at ANY point in your treatment, you can (and should if you don’t want to keep enduring misery) tell the doctor that you don’t want any more chemo or other painful treatment or meds that make you sick (like oral chemo drugs). A good doctor should always present ‘not doing any treatment’ as one of your options, especially for late-stage cancers.

PLEASE NOTE: This is solely my opinion, as well as that of every nurse I’ve ever worked with. It is not a medical suggestion, and yes, I know some (few) kinds of stage 3 and 4 cancers DO respond to chemo (sometimes). In my experience, it is the exception and not the rule.”

—Lisa M., Quora