Before My Cancer Diagnosis
I originally began seeing Dr. Barker five years ago for hypothyroidism and anemia, and I was thrilled to find a doctor who takes his time during each visit trying to understand the whole person sitting across from him.
I also liked that Dr. Barker’s take on health integrates the best of Eastern and Western approaches with an emphasis on well-researched, clinical methods. Rather quickly we dealt with my conditions and I rarely needed to see Dr. Barker until I was diagnosed with cancer two years ago.
Treatment & Results
Since my cancer diagnosis, I have gotten to see a lot of Dr. Barker as well as the other doctors and staff members of Paracelsus. Eight months ago, I underwent surgery and afterwards I wasn’t ready to endure chemo, so I began doing weekly IV treatments at Paracelsus. Once or twice a week, I spend time receiving infusions during which I am compassionately cared for by members of the staff, and my lab tests have shown this is paying off – after surgery, my tumor markers were above the normal range. After 2 months of infusions, they were back in the normal range. When we tested them again a few months later, they had dropped twice as much.
I guess I sort of lucked out in that the doctor I was seeing for general purposes happens to specialize in cancer treatment. My appreciation of Dr. Barker has deepened quite a bit as there have now been many difficult things to discuss and hard decisions to make.
In the end, Dr. Barker is a thoughtful listener with an open mind who will sensitively map out the most pragmatic treatment approach. In my case, the pragmatic thing to do at this point is to add some chemotherapy in with the treatment I am currently doing. This has been a very hard pill for me to swallow, but in the end I trust Dr. Barker’s input more than any other doctor I have ever known, and I am less apprehensive about going through it since he offers a treatment protocol that will increase the chemo’s effectiveness and reduce its side effects.