Complementary and alternative medicine are becoming increasingly popular as viable cancer treatment options.
WHEN Diane Klenke was told five years ago that she had pancreatic cancer, she was given three months to live. “The doctor told me to go home and put my affairs in order and that was it,” Ms. Klenke, now 52, remembered.
Instead of taking that advice, Ms. Klenke, who lives in Green Bay, Wis., decided to fight. She researched other doctors and alternative therapies until she hit upon the Block Center for Integrative Cancer Care in Evanston, Ill., which uses an approach of traditional and holistic therapies to treat cancer patients.
After undergoing intense chemotherapy along with proper nutrition, nausea and stress management therapies at the Block Center, Ms. Klenke’s cancer went into remission and has stayed that way.
So where is this anecdote heading? Glad you asked.
Cancer and its treatment are so complicated and relatively unpredictable that this column is in no way meant to advocate Ms. Klenke’s approach to dealing with her disease.
As a Patient Money columnist, I don’t pretend to have that expertise.
Instead, my purpose here is to provide financial guidance for those who, like Ms. Klenke, choose to take the medical path less traveled.
Besides learning the ins and outs of complementary and alternative medicine, Ms. Klenke has also become something of an expert on how to pay for these treatments. With the help of the Block center and her own research and persistence, she persuaded her insurance company to cover her entire course of treatment and the follow-up treatments that she continues to pursue, as she puts it, “to boost my immune system and keep me cancer-free.”
So-called complementary and alternative medicine — or CAM, as it is known by practitioners and adherents — is becoming more mainstream every day. In 2007, more than one in three adults and nearly one in eight children, according to a federal study sponsored by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, a division of the National Institutes of Health, used some form of CAM — from self-prescribed nutritional substitutes to repeat visits to alternative health care practitioners. So commonplace are the alternative providers that chiropractors and acupuncturists, for example, are now licensed by most states. At the same time, many traditional medical doctors, recognizing patients’ demand for alternative therapies, have signed up for training in alternative therapies or added alternative professionals to their staffs.
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