Cemil Y. is 32 years old. He was treated for small cell lung cancer at I.Ü. Çapa Medical Faculty Oncology Service.
Due to the resistance in his treatment, his family was told that he had about one month to live and he was sent to a pulmonary medicine doctor. Our doctor friend who saw the patient was a friend of mine who specialised in chest diseases in the same years as me.
Later, my doctor friend told me, “Hodja, there is nothing to do, so I referred the helpless patient to internal medicine. He even told me that as a last resort, he had inserted a stent into the left lung bronchus so that the mass could withstand a little more pressure and open the cross, but he did not respond to the treatment and received maximal treatment. The patient’s relatives brought him to my practice in Atih, which was in operation at the time when I was working at Bezmialem.
When they told me about their child’s desperate situation, I was very upset and told them about immunotherapy. They immediately agreed and we started treatment. Cemil, who could hardly climb the stairs to the second floor and had severe shortness of breath when I first saw him, seemed to be in a very good condition when he came for a check-up one month later, although the air in the lung (atelectasis) was completely deflated due to the pressure of the 9 cm. mass in the left lung. The film was one thing, Cemil was quite another. After this observation, I called my esteemed brother Dr Orhan Kızılkaya, an oncology specialist. He immediately asked for Cemil and gave him chemotherapy three times at 10 days intervals under the support of immunotherapy in a way we call metronomic, but at 1/3 of the normal dose. After 1 month, the mass was 3 cm, after 15 days it was 1.5 cm and after the next 15 days it had disappeared. Afterwards, my doctor friend, a pulmonologist, had to remove the stent he had inserted and expressed his amazement and gratitude “What did you do, my teacher?”.
Cemil could not receive immunotherapy for a long time afterwards due to financial constraints. Due to a new mass in his chest cavity, they decided to do radiotherapy 3 years later. After that radiotherapy, a hole was formed between his oesophagus and trachea and he died at a young age due to infection and other complications. Cemil, who was given 1 month to live, survived for 3.5 years.
In cancer, death sometimes occurs due to unwanted but unavoidable complications such as tumour failure of the organ, sometimes respiratory failure, sometimes bleeding, and sometimes infection. Early diagnosis is also important, but it is just as important to fight until the end. For this reason, we see that complementary approaches that do not worsen the current condition of the patient in accordance with the integrative medicine approach are gradually taking place in the field of oncology. There is no doubt that the main place in predicting this is immunological support. For this reason, cellular immune status should be investigated as well as the clinical status of the patient before each therapy and a balance programme should be established that includes a benefit and harm perspective.
