Paul, respectfully, many of us have had lots of long term issues as a result of our treatments, and continue to, 14 years out like myself. I bitch about them in private, but I know full and well that if I did not do everything I could as a very advanced stage 4, bilaterally metastasized late stage find, I would not be writing this to you today. I had to take a poison pill that just about killed me to destroy the thing that was trying to kill me. Welcome to cancer treatment.

If you are sure there is a direct cause and effect in what has happened to you, including your many recurrences, then you have a legal case you should pursue. I do not think that it is a trait of CCC's, to be overly aggressive as a group, nor particularly cavalier in their understanding of the consequences of what they do to us. For sure it can seem like a big machine, and I certainly felt like the "person" Brian Hill was not being treated, but my disease was. But I'm going with the end justifies the means.

Your story, and many others that were particularly difficult, is common to institutions and patients of all sizes and skill sets, and stages of disease. I don't think it is fair to brand all CCC's with the light of being aggressive. I think that institutions both large and small try to follow the NCCN guidelines. As good as those are, since they are a compilation of what the big CCC are all doing and works the best, not every patient responds the same way to them. Guarantees in cancer treatment are not part in parcel of treatment. Assurances that you will not be one of the people negatively impacted by the treatments are not given, as none of us is biologically uniform to the next person, hence the informed consents that we all sign. I am giving you both my personal opinion, and that of the foundation. I also have an obligation to state what the peer reviewed publications find, and they find better outcomes at the bigger CCC's. Does that mean that every patient, at every CCC, has a better outcome? No. But the data says that their chances of a better outcome statistically are better.