Dr. Francisco Contreras: Hope for Cancer

When we find cancer in an early stage, surgery is curable. And so, in that part of the treatment against cancer surgery continues to be very important. What we have seen though is that in more advanced cases, the use of high dose chemotherapy or radiation has definitely decreased. And, that is very important because these therapies are devastating to a cancer patient. They can reduce tumor activity, but they also in many cases kill the patient. So diminishing the use of chemotherapy and radiation therapy over the last 35 years has been very significant. It is very helpful for cancer patients. When they understand that they have other tools that they can use either together with a conventional therapy, or instead of conventional therapy. We have the Oasis of Hope, everything available. Surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, as well as a myriad of alternatives. 

We have found that when we prepare a patient for any anti-tumor agent being natural or conventional, that the results are much better. Even when we use chemotherapy, we can use it as I mentioned before in very low dosages, and with a lot more efficacy and virtually without any side effects. We integrate everything at the Oasis of Hope Hospital, but our aim is to provide the best therapy for a patient at the lowest cost; Money wise, emotionally and physically. There are many conventional therapies that can be very effective, but at a tremendous cost in all areas, but especially physically and emotionally, that are so devastating that a lot of times they would rather die than continue with their therapy. 

So by integrating them, we have been able to be a lot more effective in keeping our patients online. Information is one thing and information is very powerful. But if the information doesn’t inspire you to make the changes then it’s of no value to you. You can be reading something, “Oh, this is great.” But if it doesn’t make me apply that information and inspire, and so, I think the one of the most important things that I do in my daily life, in dealing with my patients and talking to my patients, in working with my patients is to inspire them to make the changes and that there’s truly a tremendous amount of hope behind everything that we’re doing. We have a lot of patients that come who were sent home to die because there’s nothing that you can do for them. There’s always something that you can do for a patient, always. A lot of times, the doctor will say, “The patient will die.” 

Well, at least you can hold their hand and pray with them and just be with them. It brings dignity, it brings love, and it brings care. That can make it a change between life and death. If a patient feels that nobody hears and the doctor is sure that they’re going to die, well they’ll die. But, if they feel that somebody is there to fight with them, everything could change. That’s why we see so many miracles at the Oasis of Hope. There’s an epidemic both of cancer that the cancer incidence and death rate continues to rise. The trust of patients in doctors has diminished tremendously. We used to be looked as saviors in white coats. Now, patients are becoming to see doctors as their foe. Why? Because the first thing that a doctor is going to do to a patient is get information sufficient so that they cannot be sued. 

We are taught actually in medical school to always give the worst case scenario. So you’re dead and I’m going to do everything that I can to help you but since I told you that you’re dead, you can’t sue me anymore. It’s horrible. Patients go through a tremendous amount of studies. Clinical, blood tests, and imaging that are a waste of time and money all to make sure the doctor that we didn’t pass anything so that I will not be sued for negligence. So a patient that could be diagnosed with a very easy test undergoes thousands of dollars of tests just to be on the safe side. And that is why the patient doctor relationship has been broken tremendously. There’s no more trust and no more love. 

I believe that love is a lot more powerful than any drugs. At the Oasis of Hope we say, ‘love your patient as you love yourself’, otherwise, you can’t really help your patient. Well, really, the patients are a lot more inclined to receive God. Whenever you’re facing death, you will grasp into anything and hopefully one of those is faith. I think that a lot of patients, when they’re faced with death, it doesn’t matter what their background was, or how angry they were at God because that’s one of the major things that we have to work, anger. The famous phase of ‘Why me?’ is really an anger phase. The anger is going to be lastly against God. Why did you allow this to happen to me? It’s a very valid question. I work a lot with the patients that if you cannot change your mindset from, ‘Why me?’ to ‘What for?’, you will not go forth. 

It’s just very important to say, well, it is me. I don’t understand why. Now, what for? There’s a tremendous message. I have a patient that we said, “We’re going to pray and we’re going to ask God for healing today.” And he said, “I can’t be healed today.” Well, why? You don’t have faith? Oh, no, I believe very strongly that I could be healed today but I cannot. “Why?” I said. Because I have three sons that were divorced. The three of them divorced. Because of my cancer, and that I had such a good relationship with my daughters-in-law, two of my sons are already back with their wives. One isn’t. I cannot be healed today. So he found the reason for his cancer, and that changed everything. Now the three of them are back together and he’s cancer-free.

The power of your mind and your faith is a lot more stronger than any medication that I can offer. So it’s very important to help patients reframe themselves from anger into hope. Eleanor Roosevelt said, “Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That’s why we call it present.” That’s what I tell my patients. I don’t know, I don’t have cancer and I don’t know if I’m going to be alive tomorrow. I may cross the street, be run over by a truck and you that we’re told that will going to die in 6 months, 20 years from now, “Remember that crazy Mexican doctor?” The hope is that we are living for a purpose, and that no matter what happens, we have to enjoy the day. There’s no more powerful teaching than your own experience. So if people see, I mentioned today in my chat of this guy that I met as a patient, and he was riddled with cancer and I was trying to cheer him up and he said, “Oh, doctor, you don’t have to cheer me up. Cancer is the best thing that ever happened to me.” 

 What? “Yes. I have three kids that I didn’t know and I have a wife that was just about to leave me and because of this cancer, now I spend every moment that I can with my children, and every afternoon, I hold hands with my wife and watch the sunset. Cancer is the best thing that ever happened.” It’s all on how you view things and that is what changes your life. He’s alive and doing very well. There’s a tremendous amount of power in your faith, in what God can do for you. In a good sense of the world, we exploit that at the Oasis of Hope. 

We’ve been criticized for that, who cares? The power of your mind is incredible. God gave it to us. Let’s use it. I came to the field of medicine, basically because of my father and I had one wonderful experience with my father as a kid in seeing the passion that he had for patients. My father was an oncologist and he’s the founder of the Oasis of Hope and then I had the privilege of working with him over 20 years before he passed away. This is a great rite working with him. So my father was a tremendous figure to me medically and as a father. Great, man. I mean, I think that the advantage that I have over other people in working with their parents is that his shoes were just too big for me and I never tried to fill them. 

That was not an issue for me but following in his footsteps has been a tremendous blessing to me. I have five children, four daughters, one son. The son, I call him my good error because we decided not to have any more children so he looks like my grandchild. He’s 17. He has told me that he wants to study medicine so I’m very grateful for that. My eldest daughter is our nutritionist so she’s working with us. I have another daughter that is working with us on the administrative side, and two others that are just artist. They’re doing other things, but I’m blessed as well. The most powerful things that my father taught me in this order are that in order for us to be effective, we have to love our patients as we love ourselves. 

I remember one thing. I did my specialty in Vienna, I did five years of surgical oncology in the University of Vienna, Austria. So I came back to work with my dad after that. I brought new technology at the time in the early 80’s, late 70’s. It was endoscopy. This long tools that we put into people, we still use them today, but it was the new thing. So I brought the colonoscopy to our hospital. The first colonoscopy, I brought it and I was trained to do that. I was doing colonoscopies left and right. So my father called me one day and said, “Francisco, I noticed that you’re prescribing a lot of colonoscopy.” Father it’s beautiful. You put this three feet long thing inside of the people and you’re looking and it’s just wonderful. Why are you writing a prescription? For what? For a colonoscopy? For you? 

So I had a colonoscopy and after that, very few people have. My father paved the way for everybody that is now involved in alternative therapies. We have transitioned from quacks into alternative doctors. I think that’s a great gain for us that are interested in offering more possibilities for cancer patients. I was invited to talk to the House of Representatives in California together with a number of oncologists from California about the possibility of instituting alternative therapies in California. They were very critical about it. At the end I told them, “Well, the problem is that it’s not technical. The problem is philosophical. Whether you want to really help cancers, or do you want to help your career.” One of them spoke that the thing is that everything has to be evidence based. 

So I want to encourage anybody that it’s in the field of medicine that evidence based medicine has proven and I told this to the oncologists that what you’re doing is of not help. And they went, “Well, no. We have all of this science and all of this publication.” Well, no. The evidence is that this year more people are going to die of cancer than last year. That is the evidence. So we must open our minds and our hearts to other things. Otherwise, we’re never going to be able to surpass this foe. Our statistics are between 3 in 20 times better than that of Sloan Kettering. The best oncological center in the world. How can it be? Because we love our patients, because we change their lifestyle, because we do some of simple things that are extremely powerful for them. 

Our success rate is so much better because we take care of the whole person. In a cancer patient, they not only has physical needs. They have emotional needs, and they have spiritual needs. And the stronghold of cancer is fear. If a patient cannot face the fear, he’s lost, or she is lost. And so one of the things that we teach our patients is how to cope with that fear, and change that fear into hope. And while there’s life, there’s hope no matter what anybody says. And if all of our successes are miracles, praise God, they’re miracles. But we set the stage for the patient and so the platform is that of hope. From there, they jump into the miracles. When a patient dies, it’s not a failure. 

The failure is that the patient will die hopeless and without any dignity. So for us, being so successful is providing dignity and hope for eternity for that patient.