Viva For Your Health

This is the story of ‘Rosie” who had to wait seven months, because of a dire Irish Health Service, to see a consultant for bowel cancer.

This brave ladies’ real name was Susie Long and she passed away in October 2007…she really never had a chance because she didn’t have Health Insurance. She left behind two teenage children.

Below is her letter to our national broadcaster RTE…Joe Duffy’s Liveline Program.

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Dear Joe,

Today I had my 12th session of chemo. I got to talking to the partner of a man who was also getting chemo. She told me that when her partner’s GP requested a colonoscopy for him he was put on the waiting list. She then phoned the hospital and told them he had private health insurance and he was seen three days later. He had bowel cancer that was advanced, but had not broken through the bowel wall and spread to other organs. She said the tumour was the size of a fist and what made him go to the doctor (apart from her nagging) was he started to lose weight rapidly. Thank goodness they got it in time and he’s going to recover.

I then came home, flicked on the tv and got into bed. The first ad on the tv was from the government telling people that bowel cancer can kill, but not if caught in time. If Bertie Ahern or Mary Harney or Michael McDowell were within reach I would have killed them. Literally. I’m not joking.

I don’t have private health insurance. It’s a long story, so I’ll start at the beginning.

I’ve suffered from digestive complaints for years. It started out with being unable to eat in the mornings or when my stomach felt tense. I’d feel too queasy. Then I got heartburn after just about everything I ate. I lived on Rennies. Then, in 2005, I got a lot of diahrea and after a few months it became constant and blood accompanied some of my bowel movements. I went to my GP clinic in the Summer of 2005. Probably about 2 months after the blood started appearing. I look back now and feel stupid for delaying for 2 months, but I wasn’t sure if the blood was caused by piles, which my late mother suffered from. I was 39 years old and had read in books and heard a doctor say on tv that bowel cancer doesn’t affect people under 50. Anyway, my normal GP was on holiday, but I saw his colleague, and she immediately sent a letter to the local hospital requesting a sonogram and a colonoscopy. Within weeks I was called for a sonogram and was diagnosed with a gallstones. That explained the queasiness and the heartburn. I expected to soon be called for the colonoscopy. I waited through the autumn, then through the start of winter. No word on the colonoscopy and no word on when my gall bladder would be removed.

In November I started to get serious lower abdominal pain after eating. I phoned the consultants secretary and asked if I was on the waiting list. She assured me I was and would be called soon. In December I started to rapidly lose weight. This definitely wasn’t like me! I love my food, Joe. I phoned the hospital again after Christmas. Again I was told that I was still on the list and would definitely be called soon. (I later found out that that consultant had retired and they had just hired a new one). Joe, from November to the end of February I was in agony. Apart from the pain and diahrea I was tired all the time. I’d literally got out of bed to go to work at 4.30 in the afternoon. Came home around 10.30pm, ate my dinner (I couldn’t eat before work because it’d make me too sick to do my job), tidied the kitchen and went to bed again. I was miserable.

Finally, on February 28, 2006, four days after I turned 40, I was called for a colonoscopy.

I woke up in the middle of the procedure and saw on a large screen, them probing a blob on my colon. They were taking a biopsy. But I didn’t have to wait for the results. I knew what I had. Soon after I met my wonderful consultant, Dr George Nassim. What a gem he is. Friendly, compassionate and funny on top of being a great surgeon. I felt like I was in good hands. I didn’t panic for more than a few hours after I was told that I had cancer. They can do loads of things to save cancer patients these days. I was young and strong. I’d been a vegetarian since I was 16. I ate mostly healthy foods, although eating at night was a serious no no when it came to my weight. I went for walks a few times a week. I felt I could beat this.

I was booked in for surgery to remove the tumour. I was given a stoma, which means I’ll have to poop in a bag for the rest of my life. I found that really difficult to handle. More difficult than the cancer sometimes. I was in St Lukes hospital for over 50 days last year. (I had to have a second surgery due to complications) Recovery was hard, but I did it. I shared a room with two lovely women who also had cancer. They have since died. In another ward I was in I was next to another woman who had cancer. She died too. The staff at St Lukes in Kilkenny are the most kind, hardworking people I’ve ever met. In March, in between surgeries, I was sent to the Mater in Dublin and had a porto-cath put in for putting the chemo through, and a PET Scan to see if the cancer had spread. If it hadn’t, I’d live. If it had spread to other organs, I’d die. It had spread to my lungs.

I felt bad enough to go to the doctor. She did what she was supposed to do. She told them I had diahrea and blood from my rectum. But what could they do? So do lots of people. Should I have skipped the list ahead of those other people with the same symptoms? I don’t think so. Should there be a list so long that it puts people at risk of dying? No. Definitely not.

I know in my heart and soul that when I started to feel really, really bad, especially in from December to February 2006, is when the cancer broke through the wall of my bowel. Of course I can’t prove it. But I know. Because it broke through the bowel I have been given 2 to 4 years from diagnosis to live. The chemo is to prolong life, not to save it. I have 3 years, tops, to go. Despite that, I’m going to try my best to make it for 5 more til my youngest turns 18. He needs me too much now. My husband has suffered right along side of me in his own way knowing that the woman he loves will be dead soon. My 18 year old daughter has been told and has gone quiet and doesn’t want to talk about it. But I know she’s scared. I haven’t told my 13 year old son yet. He’s too young to handle it. The South East Cancer Foundation in Waterford have been very helpful and will help us when the time is right to do and say the “right” things.

I don’t blame the wonderful people who work in St Lukes in Kilkenny. They work with what they are given. St. Lukes has the best A+E unit in the country. I had to use it three times in 2006 and twice with my son (nothing serious, thankfully). What did the government do? Threaten to shut it down. They also threatened to shut down the maternity unit AFTER spending millions to improve it!! That would mean Carlow women would have to travel to already overcrowded hospitals in Dublin and Kilkenny women would have to travel to Waterford, which is grand if you live in South Kilkenny. The rest could lump it and birth at the side of the road if necessary.

Twice I had to listen to two women die next to me in hospital because there’s no place for people nearing death and their loved ones to go to die and grieve in dignity.

My time in the Mater was dreadful. I was terrified I’d pick up MRSA because it was filthy. I was put on a ward with cardiac patients, mostly men, who because of their ill health were unable aim too well when they went to the toilet. Once when I used the toilet my pajama bottoms soaked up urine up to my ankles. Even though I was still sick and weak I still tried to hover over the toilet so I wouldn’t have to touch it. I wasn’t able to hover and hold up my pajama legs at the same time. I had just given my sister-in-law two sets of pj’s to take home and wash and had nothing to change into. I rinsed them out in the grimey sink and wore them damp until she returned the next day with clean ones.There was excrement stuck to the sides of the toilet for days at a time. Water flooded the shower room, soaked my clean pjs and towel that were on the floor outside the shower and ran out into the hall. After that happened the first time I learned to take a chair in to the shower room to put my stuff on. At least I knew THAT floor got water and soap put on it regularly. The man in the bed next to me, who had suffered a triple bi-pass was served up a greasy fry for tea when he had specifically ordered fish because it was healthier. On the third day he refused to eat it when they wouldn’t give him what he had ordered and went without eating on principle. I was vegetarian and so was served cheese on crackers and cheese sandwiches (fake cheese slices on white bread) for all but two meals. They brought one of the two nicer meals when I was fasting and not allowed to eat it. My suspicion is that the catering has been privatised, although I could be wrong. The staff, apart from one really nasty nurse, were lovely.

Should I blame anyone for my hard luck? I’ve thought about it over the last year and have tried to be reasonable about it. After all, I waited to get Christmas over with before I phoned the hospital for a second time asking to be seen. But today, when I heard that a very nice man who was in the same, if not worse condition, than me when he went to his GP is going to live because he had private health insurance and I’m going to die because I didn’t, I had to bite my tongue. I’m happy he’s going to live. He deserves to live. But so do I. Then I came home and watched that ad which told people to hurry up and get checked out for bowel cancer because it will save their lives, and I fucking lost it.

I’ve finally reached the angry stage, I guess. Who am I angry at? I’ll tell you, Joe. The health service has been in the hands of Fianna Fail and the PD’s for years and all they can think to do is put resources into privatisation. They don’t have the ability to change structures in the public sector that would put more resources toward patient care. But it’s not just the politicians. I’m also angry at every single voter who voted for Fianna Fail and the PDs because they thought they’d get a few more shillings in their pockets but were too greedy and stupid to realise that that money they saved in wage taxes would be made up with stealth taxes. We all knew before the last election what their health policies were and the majority of people ignored this and voted for them anyway. Maybe they thought this would never happen to them. Or maybe because so many have private health insurance they just didn’t care because they were alright, Jack.

I never dreamed I’d get cancer, let alone die from it. But I was wrong. My message to anyone with symptoms of bowel cancer is go to your GP immediately. If you, like me, don’t have health insurance, pester them until they hate you, go to your politicians and beg them to help, go to the media, get a solicitor to threaten to sue the government and the hospital if they don’t get you in soon for a colonoscopy. Otherwise, the people who love you might lose you and you’ll not get to do all the things you planned in life.

I’m writing to you because the way this country is run leads me to believe that contacting a radio show is the only way to try to change things like this. I hope that when Ms SUV and Mr Builder goes into the voting booth, they’ll think about me, my husband and especially my children. My husband is a decent man. He works full time in a good job and I worked part-time in a job I loved that helped people, but didn’t pay well. It depended on government money to help women and children in crisis, so of course couldn’t pay me well. We know what Bertie, Michael, Micheal and Mary’s priorities are.

Despite 1 1/2 incomes we couldn’t afford VHI or Bupa. But even if we could have we wouldn’t have gotten it because we believed (and still do) that all people should get good care despite their incomes. We thought jumping queues was wrong. We’re socialists…just like Bertie. Ha Ha. Now I feel like vomiting and it’s not the chemo!

From a Cancer Patient in Kilkenny.

How can you expect a child to recover from disease, become and stay vibrantly well by just taking a course of antibiotics or medicines? Often, relief from the symptoms is seen but this is followed by substandard health, which is the opposite of vitality, and many times the disease will re-occur again. I commonly see children that have had three, four and more repeat prescriptions of antibiotics for the same condition in the same season.

This is not only unhealthy for the child and a statement as to the effectiveness of ‘the method’ of modern medicine in this application, but is also really a reflection that the parent is out of control of their child’s health. It reveals a deficiency in the method of medical disease care in the modern society. It also reveals that ‘preventative medicine’, which I call ‘lifestyle education’, is not being practiced by the parents in relation to their children. In my experience I have seen very little evidence of parents being educated as to how to create healthy robust children.

Very often I see children after they have been treated by many courses of medicines designed to remove symptoms and not causes. The result is these children are, without exception, run down and unhealthy. And this is not because of their original condition. It is because of all the strong drugs used to ‘fight the disease.’ No wonder the problem keeps coming back! Often the symptoms may change and become more deep-seated and chronic and then taking on a new name with different but related symptoms.

According to the press, in southeast Queensland, more medications such as antibiotics are prescribed than any other place on the earth. Antibiotics are in most cases routinely prescribed for most ear, nose, throat and bronchial problems. The prescriptions are often written so that they can be repeated many times. This is not only unsuccessful, it’s also unhealthy and thus is not a wise choice of the method of treatment. The effects of strong medications are harmful to the body. Particularly new, young, developing bodies and minds, as you will shortly see.

“Australians are prescribed more antibiotics per head than any other western nation. Their widespread over-use may also contribute to the growing problem of bacteria developing resistance to the drugs,” reports Dr Christopher Del Mar, in his research paper published in the Australian Medical Journal 1992: “We are at the top of the league in prescribing, yet there is no demonstrated benefit.”

“Side effects of antibiotics include rashes, thrush, and possible allergic and fatal reactions. Antibiotic sales have doubled since the mid 80S.” (The Bulletin with Newsweek, April 1994.)

There are more adverse side effects of antibiotics than these cited in Newsweek. One significant side effect of allowing you child to have repeated courses of antibiotics is that of slowing down the development of your child. This is a very serious side effect and warns against their value of this form of treatment for your child.

“The difference in the occurrence of developmental delays between children who take high doses of antibiotics and those who don’t is outstanding,” says a co-founder of the US Developmental Delay Registry.

In a survey including children aged between 1 and 12 years of age, it was found that those who had taken more than 20 courses of antibiotics are over 50% more likely to suffer developmental delays. Children who had three or fewer courses of antibiotics were half as likely to become developmentally delayed. A nutritionist with the Registry cautions:

“Parents should be put on notice that utilizing antibiotics as a prophylactic could jeopardize their children’s development. We believe alternative approaches to treating ear infections should be considered.” (The New Vegetarian and Natural Health, Autumn 2000.)

It is an unhealthy and serious problem. More and more medicines are being prescribed every year and to what effect? According to the reports, this form of wide spread over-prescribing is doing no good at all. A common example of prescribing medicines to treat the symptoms of disease and not the cause is in the case of the condition known as asthma.

What is the result if this method of treatment and ‘medicine mentality’ continues? The child has a very good chance of remaining on this medication for the rest of its restricted life. This is an example of the tragic situation of what is happening to our children in this and most modern countries. This is not only because the medicines are not removing the cause, but also because parents are not taught to consider the cause of the disease and take an active role of prevention and building health in their children. Permanent medication is a danger to the long-term health of the individual taking it.

Taking permanent medication has four main dangers:
• The body is adaptive and can become ‘more reliant’ on the medication.

• The body becomes more encumbered, unhealthy and reactive to new chemicals in foods and the environment because the cause has not been removed.

• The toxic side effects of the medicine over years of consuming it have a negative effect on the liver, kidneys other internal organs including the brain and its function!

Lastly and very importantly, taking medicines on a permanent basis will give a ‘false sense of security’ because it removes or, at least reduces and to an extent controls the annoying symptoms (which are the body’s warning signs that something is wrong). This is extremely dangerous as the following story reveals.

I have a newspaper report of a 29-year-old nurse. She had suffered from asthma all her life and was on medication for it. One weekend she went to Brisbane (72 km away from the Gold Coast) for the weekend and forgot to take her medication. While there she went to a party and had some foods and drink that brought on an asthma attack. With no medication handy, she suffocated and died because she could not breathe!

My question is this: Was the medical ‘drug’ treatment she had followed all her life successful? NO! The treatment all those years was only suppressing (hiding) the symptoms and the underlying cause was never considered exposed and removed! Because of this, it was only a matter of the combination of the wrong conditions to be present for the person get into trouble.

This is what is happening all over Australia and the modern world because people are brought up not to think but to foilov along what everybody else does and not asking the golden questions, “it is causing this condition?” and” How can we remove the cause and overcome it completely!” And if you are not satisfied with the anwers. Seek out another opinion from an alternate source!

That’s what you need. That’s what you’re paying for your children’s! And that’s what you demand!

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There are four main kinds of germs that cause infectious diseases. Bacteria are single-cell germs that have the ability to multiply rapidly and release chemicals that will make you sick. Viruses are capsules containing genetic information and use your own cells to multiply.
Fungi are vegetable-like mushrooms or mildew that will make you ill and protozoa are single-cell predators that are looking for a host where they can eat and live. The idea of contracting communicable diseases is enough to make anyone want to live in a bubble, but the body is naturally very resilient, so simply washing your hands can avoid most trouble.
There are viral, contagious diseases like AIDS, Smallpox, Ebola, Hepatitis, sexually transmitted Herpes or HPV, Influenza, Measles, Mumps, Rabies, SARS, West Nile, Meningitis, Mono, Pneumonia and Yellow Fever. Then there are bacterial, transmittable diseases like Anthrax, Botulism, Cat Scratch Fever, Cholera, Diphtheria, Gonorrhea, Leprosy, Lyme disease, Strept Throat, Salmonella, Scarlet Fever, Tuberculosis, Typhus and Shingles. Some transferable diseases are transmitted via parasites, such as Chagas Disease, Malaria, Pinworm Infection, Scabies, Trichomoniasis, Giardiasis, Echinococcosis and other rare diseases. Other times, diseases are transmitted through fungus or prion (proteins).
When dealing with an infectious disease, the first step is the infection, when microbes enter your body and begin to multiply. Health experts say the infection becomes a disease when cells in your body become damaged and the symptoms of illness appear. White blood cells and antibodies will attempt to ward your body off from the infection, which results in fevers, coughing, sneezing or other ailments.
Once the disease takes hold, medication will be needed. It’s important to know the difference between infectious diseases caused by bacteria or by a virus because medications that may treat one are ineffective against treating the other. Bacterial infections caused by single-celled living organisms are treated with antibacterial antibiotics. Viral infections, which alter genetic capsules, cannot be treated with medication directly but may have the symptoms assuaged with lozenges, rest, water, decongestants, cough syrups and pain relievers.
Infectious diseases are no laughing matter. If you are coughing and nose blowing all over the place but feel tempted to go to work, then resist and rest. Not all diseases are contagious, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. Avoid sharing drinks or personal items with people and remember that prevention is the best cure.
According to the Center for Disease Control, there are seven steps you can take to prevent infection at home: always wash your hands, routinely clean AND disinfect all kitchen and bathroom surfaces, follow food safety precautions to prevent under-cooking meat or cross-contaminating surfaces, get immunized, use antibiotics properly, keep your pets clean and stay away from wild animals. Don’t be one of the 160,000 Americans who die from an infectious disease each year!