Almost delay the illness by not following the doctor's advice and blindly taking Chinese herbal medicine

RADEN AJENG ESTIAWATI is a patient with stage IV breast cancer in Indonesia.

In April 2016, ESTIAWATI started feeling painful in her back. At first, she thought it was just caused by a cold or a fever, and did not pay attention to it. A few days passed by, her pain did not ease as she thought, so she went to local hospital for a gynecological examination, which had examined the uterus. However, the check-up she had show normal, and still the back pain hound her as usual with no specific cause.

The gynaecologist advised her to do further examinations so as to find out the cause of pain. Shortly afterwards, She found the dermatologist who had previously treated her skin for advice. The dermatologist suspected that something went wrong in her body, then suggested her go through examinations in oncology department as well as introduced doctors for her.

RADEN AJENG ESTIAWATI

ESTIAWATI finally saw the oncologist after several times introduction, and she told the doctor about her medical history. She mentioned that 10 years ago, she had a cyst in her right breast, at the time she was told by the doctor that it’s a no big deal. Listened to her description, the oncologist referred that her back pain may be caused by breast cancer. Since the machine for PET scan in the Indonesian hospital was broken at that time, ESTIAWATI could not immediately confirm the diagnosis of her disease. Soon, doctors in Indonesia hospital advised her to visit Singapore for further check-up.

However, ESTIAWATI did not value her own condition and also refused to go to Singapore for any other inspections. As time went by, she took Chinese herbal medicine and insisted on diet, exercises, all these were supposed to fight cancer by improving her immunity. Through ESTIAWATI’s mum lung cancer experience, where ESTIAWATI knew basic knowledge of cancer prevention and treatment, it’s her hope to fight cancer by herself.

With almost no payback, her physical condition worsened, with the right breast slowly rotted, then she realized the seriousness of cancer. In Indonesia, she was diagnosed with stage ⅢB of breast cancer at that time. By chance, her son at university once told her that there was a cancer symposium held by the Indonesia office of St.Stamford Modern Cancer Hospital Guangzhou, where she can go and consult for oncologist's advice on treatment. Set up her mind, she signed up for the symposium. It was Professor Liu Lvguang, who gave her consultation and advice by checking her breast lump in lady’s room and found out her deteriorated breast with partially rotten. Depending on her several years of experience, Professor Liu judged the cancer had already developed into stageⅣ, and she patiently analyzed the disease for her while introduced minimally invasive treatment for her. Emergency right now was immediate treatment in Guangzhou. Prior to this professional diagnosis, ESTIAWATI thought for sure that her rotten breast was just caused by long-term taking in Chinese herbal medicine, which called “heat toxin”in Chinese language. Almost delayed her own treatment by not regarding the breast cancer seriously.

Minimally invasive therapy treat cancer effectively instead of surgery

“At the symposium, Professor Liu played an introduction video that included various patients with different tumors who had been under treatments in St. Stamford Modern Cancer Hospital Guangzhou, breast cancer was in it. She pointed out that the therapeutic effect and prognosis of breast cancer was very optimistic. Throughout the symposium, Professor Liu introduced several minimally invasive techniques, including interventional therapy, cryotherapy and particle implantation. For interventional therapy, it’s performed under the guidance of CT, with a special catheter infusing drug that targeted for tumor cells directly through the artery into the tumor. Sitting there, I heard every piece of detail carefully, and all these information gave me confidence to take interventional therapy recommended by Professor Liu.”

Medical staff and ESTIAWATI

“I came to St.Stamford Modern Cancer Hospital Guangzhou on February 28, 2017. Admitted to the hospital, I was with terminal cancer, where tumors were metastasized from the right chest to the left chest, armpit lymph nodes and even lung. Suffered from pleura effusion and badly wound pain, I had difficulty breathing. Thanks to doctors effective treatment with my symptoms and drainage of the effusion, then I could sleep better with smooth breathing. At that time, I could not be too much grateful to doctor Pan Xin who patiently dressed my rotten wound for the entire time.” ESTIAWATI said.

Since the admission of ESTIAWATI, the Multidisciplinary Team(MDT)developed minimally invasive combination treatments based on the condition of ESTIAWATI that covering interventional therapy, cryotherapy, particle implantation and natural therapy.

“I obviously had the treatment effects once I took cryotherapy. Finally, after one year tortured by pain in Indonesia, I relieved with induced tumor for the first time. Interventional therapy, cryotherapy, particle implantation therapy and natural therapy that I had been treated, healed my right breast wound, killed the right breast tumor, and significantly reduced the left breast tumor, even necrotized the metastatic tumor in lung. Now my body is getting better.” said ESTIAWATI.

Cooperate with the doctors by following their advice and treatment

“After treatment, it is normal that our body feel weak, due to different ability of treatment toleration according to our physical condition. Luckily, we have doctors here who take care of patients carefully no matter with what kind of uncomfortable symptoms, they immediately deal with them professionally.”

“Dr. Zhang Weizhong and Dr. Pan Xin are quite excellent, although they can be strict from time to time. I regard them as my mother and pay attention to their words. That’s why I won’t doubt or argue with them. Once I remembered when Dr. Pan asked me to return ten days later, I asked him whether postponing check-up could be negotiated. With no surprise, he disagreed, I knew it from my heart that he was truly considering my condition. So, I was coming back to take my check-up each time in punctual. Personally speaking, we patients need such a harsh doctor in that we can be recovering sooner. It’s only to cooperate with doctors then we would get maximum therapeutic effects. As we all known, mutual effort are important in cancer treatment.”

*Surgery, in addition to the appropriate chemotherapy and radiotherapy, are effective in treating early cancer, but certain patients in late stage of cancer may not be tolerate surgery well as they can be relatively weak. A combination of carefully planned minimally invasive therapy, chemotherapy or radiotherapy can effectively reduce the side effects and discomfort of treatment and may help patient get better efficacy.