I am diagnosed with esophagael cancer. The recommended treatment is radiation and chemotherapy to be followed by surgery to remove the tumor. I am not comfortable with this option. I was wondering how TCM would treat this and how it would deal with removing the blockage.
Comment by Chad J. Dupuis, L.Ac.
There are of course treatments within Chinese Medicine, acupuncture, herbal, and medical qi gong, that may be very helpful for cancer. Treatment, however, requires a few things. One you need to see a practitioner who has extensive experience with cancer, you need to monitor your progress with western medical doctors and you may need to consider some combination - say surgery and Chinese Medicine. An experienced practitioner should be able to guide you in what they think will be best in your situation. Treatments for cancer are fairly individualized and are somewhat long term - so you should expect to be seen weekly for at least a few months, most likely longer.
If you don’t have a Chinese Medicine practitioner nearby with experience in cancer then most likely a combination of western and eastern approaches will be best. The vast majority of practitioners have at least some experience in managing and limiting the side effects of western treatment options. If they don’t have much experience approaches to aiding you are well documented and researched.
In our system which heavily uses a point set called huatuo points the primary blockages are usually in the 6, 7 and 8th thoracic areas on the left side. Our system also uses a energy healing process called tongren therapy which you can obtain treatment online for free from tongrenstation.com .