Understanding Cancer Patients
(and attitude towards diseases)

Tinus Smits, M.D., homeopathic physician

The cancer patient has permitted cells that are 'not him' to grow in his body without activating his defense mechanisms sufficiently to destroy them. The tumor is a foreign entity that does not respect him and finally destroys him, without even respecting structures such as blood vessels, muscles, lymph nodes. It grows by transgressing every structure, every border.

We can easily understand what happens when we compare the patient to a country that has borders and an army to defend its integrity as a country. If an enemy soldier crosses the border and establishes himself inside the country and the army is not well-trained enough to capture the enemy, to imprison him or to kill him, the enemy will call his friends and other soldiers will pass the border and settle down. Their base will be stronger and stronger. Without any respect for the original people, they will destroy everything around them which is not to their own advantage and will take all the food that was intended for the indigenous people. They will send soldiers to other places in the country (metastasis) to take over all the power of the country.

The only possibility the country has finally is to ask other countries to help it and to attack the enemy with heavy weapons (surgery, radiation and chemotherapy). But such a massive fight greatly weakens the country and the outcome is very uncertain.

On the cellular level the same process takes place. The membrane of the cell is unstable and weak and the cell is ingesting toxins, not able to defend its integrity. These ingested poisons damage his normal functioning, creating anarchy and estranging himself from his own essence. But the whole process had already started long before on the emotional and mental level.

What happens the most on the emotional/mental level to a patient having taken Carcinosinum is that his self confidence grows and that he starts to listen more to his own needs and to defend himself better. He fortifies his borders and gets into a process of more awareness of what is "him" and what is "not him", no longer allowing the poisonous energy from outside to settle within his borders. He takes more care of himself, being attentive to his own needs and desires.

A process of cleaning out at all levels takes place, poisonous relationships are broken off or corrected, a consciousness of being someone that deserves respect and love blooms gradually, and a marked influenza or inflammation with high fever for the first time in twenty years cleans the poison from his body. All this means that the reactivity is increasing.

Medical Influences
Influences from outside that are experienced as attacking him or weakening him without giving him the possibilities to defend himself can stimulate the same process: first of all massive vaccination. I once asked a lady during regression therapy to go to her first vaccination and to tell me what this vaccination meant to her and without hesitation she said: "It took away an opportunity to defend myself."
With massive vaccination in early childhood we give the message to the child and his immune system that his own defense mechanism is not reliable and that he has to be protected from outside. This not only weakens his immune system but also gives his personality the feeling that he is not strong and good enough and that he has to rely upon other people rather than upon his own force and vitality. (See my publication about "The Post-Vaccinal Syndrome")

Also the suppression of fever, a defense mechanism par excellence, the use of antibiotics and corticosteroids can lower the defense mechanisms. If during every infection the parents suppress the reactivity of the child by giving aspirin and penicillin, how can he still believe that he is able to defend himself against his invaders (bacteria, viruses, etc.)? This practice engenders a lack of reactivity and the development of severe illnesses in childhood as pertussis, pneumonia, chronic inflammation (otitis, bronchitis, rhinitis, etc.).
(Vegetable soup and in bed for day or two, in most cases, will do the trick)

The Carcinosin patient has a tendency to place strength outside himself and to feel weak and vulnerable inside. That's also what happens when he finally gets a tumor and he has to be operated on, radiated and treated with chemotherapy. He is helpless, desperate and completely dependent on his doctor.

I always insist with cancer patients that they have to decide for themselves and feel what is good for them and what they want and do not want. You have to give them back their strength and they have to take it back. Dr. Bernie Siegel, an American surgeon, insists in his excellent book Love, Harmony and Cure, that as a patient you have to be assertive, to ensure that when hospitalized you have a room with a view, to ask for your favorite music during the operation, etc.
To stand up for yourself and to fulfill your own needs is of primary importance in cure.

Maria Late, who was one of my patients, can help us to understand how difficult it can be for these people to stand up for themselves. She was a young woman, a doctor, with operated breast cancer and metastasis. One day she had to undergo an examination of her bladder. The surgeon decided to do a suprapubic puncture, but she felt strongly that a catheter would be better for her. So she asked the doctor not to do the puncture, but he had to ask the surgeon responsible, who said "no" and decided she should undergo the suprapubic puncture. She finally felt unable to contradict him. Then the contrast fluid was injected by error in her abdomen. She was very ill and recovered only slowly during two months of hospitalization, but died some months later.

The Carcinosin personality has a tendency to let others violate his own space. He doesn't take sufficient space for himself, but his space is invaded by others and he is too weak to throw them out. The Carcinosin personality has to learn to take his destiny in his own hands.

Restoration Of Hope

Part of the allopathic damage is unfortunately often the complete annihilation of any hope for cure for the patient. To be sent away without any hope for better, without any support, leaves the patient in despair. But the patient needs hope.

In hospitals this hope is often killed completely, because of some curious thinking of the doctor and the use of inexorable statistics. Leave any hope for cure to the patient is often considered by allopathic doctors as giving "false hope". But what is false hope? False hope is saying to your patient that you will surely cure him, that he will not die, etc. But no patient can cure if he, himself, does not decide to survive and for that he needs hope. Hope that he will not necessarily die, that his doctor will sustain him in his effort to find a solution to his life threatening illness and that he is also capable to do so. He has to be respected in his attempt, knowing that his doctor will give the best treatment that is available.

No statistics are deciding how many chances he has to cure, but the patient himself. He has to reconnect with his inner force, even if during the operation, radiation and chemotherapy he felt completely delivered to the authority of his doctor. He has to be helped to take up again responsibility for his own life and he has to be guided to do more than only wait and hope that there will not be any relapse.

I have a patient that reacted wonderfully on chemotherapy and had almost no side effects and after 7 cures her doctor decided to give her two more cures to see if even more progress was possible. But she didn't have a good feeling to do so and decided herself not to take more cures and to wait to see if the tumor would shrink without further chemotherapy.

Dr. Bernie Siegel gives us a clear vision on false hope.
"The concept of false hope is one of the most ridiculous things I know of. Why should we try to authorize hope according to the statistics? Hope is a variable that can change the statistics. If only 99% die of a condition, then let's stress the fact that that person has a chance of not dying. If you tell a group of those people that they are the 10% who will survive, you may find that 30% or 40% or 50% get better."

Take one's own destiny in one's hands and discuss the treatment as someone who is completely responsible for his own health and life is very important and enhances the possibilities to cure. The patient has to be strong to face remarks from her doctors and other people who don't believe in any possibility to cure.

Restroration Of Reactivity, from the tumoral stage back to the infectious stage
Reactivity can be defined as the capability of a person to maintain his mental, emotional and physical integrity by an efficient system of protection against perturbing influences from outside.

On the mental level the person has to be equipped with reinforcing ideas about himself, his life, and about the surrounding world, i.e. that his life is meaningful, that he came on earth with a purpose, that what he is doing is good for himself, for others and for the world, -namely a positive look.

On the emotional level he needs joy, feeling of love toward himself and other people, to nature, to the earth and the universe. He needs the capability to express his emotions, even those that are commonly labeled as negative: anger, grief, irritability, for example.

On the physical level he needs a good immune system, capable of cleansing his body of indisposing bacteria, viruses, toxins, etc. (c-herb).
Surely the best reaction of our organism to activate our immune system when our equilibrium is in danger is fever. Therefore it is hard to accept that anyone who really understands this mechanism still considers that fever is an enemy to be suppressed. For most people and doctors this is even common practice nowadays.

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Children often have sudden high fever for only one or two days, and this is in fact a sign of good reactivity. But when again and again such reactions are suppressed by antipyretics and antibiotics or in more serious illnesses with corticosteroids then slowly but surely the reactivity is broken down and there is a slide from infectious disease to tumoral disease.
The infectious stage is a more reactive state (with fever) than the tumoral stage (without fever). In the tumoral stage the organism is weaker than the tumor, whereas in the infectious state our energy is mostly strong enough to overcome an infection or can be fairly easily activated by a well-chosen homeopathic (or herbal) remedy.

In the infectious stage the energy of the person organizes everything to overcome the disease: high fever which enhances the metabolism of the body enormously, an increase of white blood cells, acceleration of blood circulation, vascular dilatation in the affected area or all over the body, loss of appetite to give our digestive system the possibility to concentrate on the elimination of toxins, diarrhea, sweating, a running nose and eruptions, all elimination mechanisms. These kinds of elimination processes occur frequently after the administration of a homeopathic remedy.

But also an infection can be a sign of a curing process. I remember this man, 45 years old, who got a double otitis with running ears after a dose of Saccharum officinale 200K. He never had otitis since his 5 years and had no ears problems. But shortly after this inflammation and elimination process joint pains disappeared completely and his general condition was much better.

It is not by coincidence that children go through a certain number of eruptive diseases, as Rubella, German measles, Scarlatina, fifth or sixth disease, etc. and that they have easily a running nose or infections with high fever. Everybody who is aware of these facts knows that vaccinations, antipyretics, antibiotics and other suppressive drugs that are so largely used in routine modern medicine practice have also their reverse. It pushes the human being already at a very premature age in the direction of the tumoral stage. This fact was already described by Hahnemann 200 years ago. Therefore it is not surprising that we have to face cancer and all kind of internal diseases as one of the most wide spread diseases on this earth and that the number of cancer patients increases still every year.

The tumoral stage is a low reactivity stage. There is not a acute phase, no fever, no eruption, no accelerated or enhanced evacuation of toxins. There is no acute outbreak followed by a restoration of balance as in the infectious stage. There is a chronic unbalance sometimes even without any visible or noticeable physical expression. Cancer can grow without any perceptible sign that something is wrong. Sure, for the holistic doctor there are already a lot of symptoms not only on the mental and emotional plane but also on the physical plane, which he can interpret as a precancerous stage. He is able to help his patient to return from this insidious tumoral stage to the infectious stage and can prevent that his patient slips down to chronic internal diseases as heart diseases, cancer, etc.  But such preventive treatments are still more exception than daily practice.

The majority of patients are suddenly confronted with cancer and often wondering why this happened to them, because they were almost never ill, had no influenza, no fever, no major health problems for decades and believed to be in excellent health. It is as if cancer manifested suddenly in the body!  We know that tumors grow slowly for years, even decades before they attain sufficient volume and invasive power to become a major health problem.

In ageing there is a spontaneous shift from infectious to tumoral diseases enhanced by vaccination and other suppressive treatments. So reactivity is an important quality not only of our physical but also of our mental and emotional body. In the USA they found out that the immune system of optimistic people was about 60% stronger than that of pessimists. Therefore it is of great importance that cancer patients believe in their cure, that they feel stronger than their tumor(s) and that they "go for it".

It is a bad sign that cancer patients are so often robbed of any hope of cure. One of my cancer patients had this experience several times. I saw her for the first time five years ago, completely desperate after two breast amputations in one year followed by metastasis in the spine, lungs and liver. The first physical signs of cure were the calcification of the metastases in the spine about six months after the beginning of the "alternative" treatment.

Seeing this, she expressed her joy and the radiologist said: "Oh Madam, you surely don't believe that you can still be cured?"
Now all her tumors are almost completely gone and she is in an excellent state, convinced that it is only a matter of time before she is cured completely. But her surgeon said at her last visit, perturbed by her enthusiasm and that of her husband: "Madam, are you well aware that you have an incurable disease?"
These kind of experiences taught me that a depressive state weakens the immune system and has to be repaired as soon as possible by a knowledgeable professional.

(published in Homoeopathic Links 1/98)