She also clarified that Mark Simon is not an oncologist. Thank you Candice-Marie for this very important clarification!
Quick update. I asked Candice-Marie on her facebook page why the Daily Mail article said she only had five years to live after getting the liver cancer diagnosis.
Well done, Violet! Although it probably should say "Liver Tumors Were Benign," because "benign cancer" is an oxymoron.
ReplyDeleteGlad she 'fessed up about Simon's credentials - but how do you have a "speciality in cancer" if you have not literally specialized? Doctors have to work and study extremely hard to qualify as a "specialist" in any field. Has he actually trained in oncology? (I know the answer).
Yeah I guess you're right - it is confusing because it was cancer in the liver that magically became benign tumors in the liver.
DeleteI suppose that is something she says and not him, because if he is the one putting that out there then I am considering reporting him to the California State Medical Board.
I think it is something she says - I thought maybe you could request some clarification from Candice! Clarification is "positive," right? ;)
DeleteSomeone called Louis-Philippe Huppé is posting a link to your "Demand the Truth From Candice-Marie Fox" article under every post Candice makes. Louis-Philippe, if you're reading this, I salute you.
A link to my blog was posted in the comments of a French-language news article on her. I am so glad the truth is going global.
Delete"He is a person with a strong scientific background." Yeah? So? So are a few friends of mine. In chemistry, physics, and mathematics, respectively. Which makes them totally unqualified to diagnose or treat anyone's cancer. Likewise a "clinical nutritionist", regardless of how "strong" their scientific background may be.
DeleteAny person with a so-called "speciality in cancer" who "doesn't believe in healing with toxic drugs or radiation" is someone I would run a hundred miles from. Scientific evidence - the real, hard, RCT evidence, not the group-hugs-and-happy-thoughts evidence - shows that the "toxic drugs and radiation" Candice-Marie sneers at, while far from perfect, are the best weapons we have at the moment.
There's a quote I rather like, from "The Quarry" by the late Iain Banks. I haven't yet read the novel, but someone brought the quote to my attention. (Warning: language.)
"Oh, Guy," Pris says, her face pinched. "Honey, is there really nothing-"
"No. Nothing," Guy says. "Tried everything."
"Have you tried alternative or holistic-"
"No. Not fucking going to, either. You can keep that bollocks. Whatever I've got, the fucker can keep growing despite industrial fucking doses of gamma radiation and laugh in the fucking face of chemicals they originally used in mustard gas. I therefore find the prospect of it being turned around by tiny amounts of infinitely diluted water or the power of closing one's eyes in a nice dark room and thinking about pink ponies somewhat unlikely, to say the least."
If Banks were still alive, I'm sure he'd add pineapple juice to that list.
This deserves to be a post in its own right, Karen! Very well said. I just can't believe her story has caught on as fast as it has. I guess the only way to stop her is to keep demanding evidence of her claims.
DeleteCandice has really stretched the limits of the already meaningless concept of "toxins" by stating that her relationship with her husband was "toxic." The lack of even the most basic common sense is staggering.
In slightly sad news, on her personal page Candice asked for suggestions for her new website, and one of her supporters has asked for information on "how to conquer hereditary illnesses." If she starts dishing out advice on curing Huntington's Disease or Down Syndrome, I'm going to be pretty crabby.
The bullshit radar is going off the charts lately, this Candice is setting herself up as heir apparent to Jess Ainsclough. Love the delaying tactics used in her responses to you. And watch out Violet with all that bullying she will block you! So glaringly obvious her story is fictional.
ReplyDeleteNah - the person setting up to be the heir apparent of Jess Ainscough Inc is her boyfriend. http://us1.campaign-archive1.com/?u=db7e8301d4c33d1834bf478c5&id=af13f997ad&e=3fe9dedcb0
DeleteMuch like Belle Gibson's scar free heart surgery, I can not detect any sign of a neck incision on Candice Marie although she supposedly had a 4.5 hour procedure to remove '20 lumps'.
ReplyDeleteShe does have a pale scar on the upper side of chest, it was visible in some of the pics. I've had thyroidectomy without lymph node surgery, so my scar is a bit higher, but still similar, so I do think she actually had the surgery and probably the initial cancer and RAI treatment, but the whole story is blown up to be something different.
DeleteMy impression is that she had thyroid cancer, which was treated with surgery and radiation. They wanted to give her chemo to ensure that every last cancer cell was destroyed; she refused. The "tumours" she claims to have had in the liver were benign, if indeed they existed, and I assume the "cancer cells" detected in her lungs were also either benign or non-existent.
DeleteSo ultimately you have a young woman who was treated for thyroid cancer, and that's all. AFTER that cancer was treated she either misunderstood or deliberately stretched the truth to claim it had metastasized, and that she had subsequently cured it herself.
Sorry, "pre-cancerous" cells in the lungs.
DeleteWhere is the story of the pre-cancerous cells in her lungs? Can you post a link? I want to make a comprehensive article and list about her claims and what she has and has not rectified.
DeleteThe Daily Mail article mentioned it:
Deletehttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3017683/Former-model-cancer-turned-chemo-claims-cured-eating-three-PINEAPPLES-day-ditched-husband-well.html
as did the Mirror:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/i-beat-terminal-cancer-pineapples-5426200
in fact if you do a Google search for "Candice-Marie Fox" and "lungs" it brings up most of the results:
https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&es_th=1&ie=UTF-8#q=candice-marie+fox+lungs
Thanks, I did that and I found it. I mention it in my open letter to her.
DeleteAuma that scar, if it is one, is not in the right place for thyroid surgery. IMHO as an OR nurse of 25+ years.
DeleteWell, she has promised that she will post all her medical records so we will know soon enough. At this point she implies that her thyroid cancer was treated using reality-based medicine. It is her claims of having healed "liver cancer" using fantasy-based medicine that concerned me.
DeleteHi Amanda Gore!
DeleteYes, the scar is definitely way too low. Instead of being skeptical, I assumed (which is probably a bad habit when dealing with stories like these) that the incision may be different if she had a different surgery, e.g., removal of the claimed 20 cancerous lymph nodes.
Actual thyroidectomy scar location is this: http://yeahnayeah.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/photo1.jpg
Her images:
No scar at all
https://s.yimg.com/ea/img/-/150330/cancer_claim_1ahhr4s-1ahhr5e.jpg?x=656&sig=G7w6BvNURZBtUQg_qwMxQg
Barely visible here:
http://i1.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article5426160.ece/ALTERNATES/s615b/PAY-Candice-Marie-Fox.jpg
and here
http://static.cdn.markiza.sk/media/a501/image/file/2/0118/15SX.candice2_jpg.jpg
In the regular thyroidectomy spot she has no visible scar. Then again, maybe the surgeon did a great job, placing the scar in a skin fold? If the surgery was in 2011, it's been almost 4 years, is that enough time for the scar not to be visible at all? If so, what is the visible lower scar at the top of the chest then?
My thyroidectomy scar is definitely still visible after 2 years, especially when I am tanned and if the viewer knows what to look for, it can be found easily, although my surgeon really did a great job. If a scar in the correct spot is not visible, one could wonder if Candice had a minimally invasive thyroid surgery, but that would not make sense in the context of 20 cancerous lymph-nodes, would it? Wouldn’t 20 nodes require quite an extensive surgery that leaves scars for sure? If I just check thyroid lymph node dissection pictures online, I don’t see how one would avoid visible scars.
I'm just a patient myself, not an expert, so very curious. I wonder what an actual endocrine/oncology surgeon would say about this.
*thyroid cancer lymph node dissection
DeleteThanks Auma for your input. She does claim on one of her facebook pages that she thinks the radiation treatment from her thyroid cancer treatment caused her cancer to spread, so it would be very important for her to post all the treatment she went through when she had thyroid cancer. I too would like an expert to come here and weigh in. Also, she is a "model" so perhaps she photoshops all her pictures.
DeleteI am having a hard time finding photos of her neck, but here is one. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10153127093327835&set=pb.562212834.-2207520000.1428075601.&type=3&theater I do not see a scar but I assume it is possible for the scar to fade and maybe it was photoshopped out.
DeleteWait, I think I see one in this photo https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10152977193437835&set=pb.562212834.-2207520000.1428075601.&type=3&theater
Deletehttps://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10153127093327835&set=pb.562212834.-2207520000.1428075601.&type=3&theater
DeleteTo me it looks just like a fold in the skin in the neck, but I am no expert.
https://scontent-fra.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xfa1/v/t1.0-9/644388_10152977193437835_8121336644576763509_n.jpg?oh=40581410313a12c3ef1c8c7b388a53a1&oe=5571040C
In this one it is still that same strange incision location - a lot lower than a regular thyroidectomy scar. Not quite sure what is going on there. But you are probably right about the hiding - a model could maybe try to hide a scar with make-up or photoshop it out.
Can anyone find anything more precise about the location of the 20 cancerous lumps? Thyroid cancer usually spreads to neck lymph-nodes first and I assumed that was Candice's case from this fragment:
"Candice, from Houghton Regis, Hertfordshire, found a lump above her left collarbone in 2011 and an ultrasound revealed around 20 papillary thyroid carcinomas." I assume she would have a thyroidectomy scar AND a neck dissection scar on the left side.
I have a hard time believing that she could be lying about having had cancer because of description of radioactive treatment in that one long loony podcast. She describes quite precisely what happens. Still, something doesn’t quite fit, maybe it is bad reporting or inconsistent stories from Candice or both. After all, in different sources there are different stories about adjuvant radioactive therapy vs. chemo being rejected by her, so it wouldn’t be a surprise if there were more inconsistencies.
Well, according to her noncologist Mark Simon, she had stage four thyroid cancer. Would that require a different kind of surgery? Also, can anyone find out which kind of thyroid cancer she had? I assume that treatment varies depending on the type and stage. Stage four certainly sounds very serious to me.
DeleteCandice claims it was papillary carcinoma of the thyroid, stage 4. Such a stage itself is a really strange claim, because in papillary thyroid cancer age makes a major difference in staging. As far as I know, if you are below 45 at the age of diagnosis, you cannot possibly have a stage that is higher than stage II irrespective of the spread of the cancer. After age of 45 the same spread could mean stage IV. Candice is 31 according to the articles about her.
DeleteSee the info here:
http://www.cancer.org/cancer/thyroidcancer/detailedguide/thyroid-cancer-staging
Section: Papillary or follicular (differentiated) thyroid cancer in patients younger than 45
Quote: Younger people have a low likelihood of dying from differentiated (papillary or follicular) thyroid cancer. The TNM stage groupings for these cancers take this fact into account. So, all people younger than 45 years with these cancers are stage I if they have no distant spread and stage II if they have distant spread.
Standard treatment for papillary thyroid cancer is surgery + radioactive iodine. Some forms of chemo are used for advanced cases (as far as I know - when a patient does not respond to radioactive treatment), some other options are neck lymph-node ethanol ablation and external radiation therapy (not to be confused with radioactive iodine treatment that she supposedly had).
Maybe she had some kind of a sub-variant of cancer that is more aggressive and more difficult to treat? Maybe de-differentiated (horrible option)? Papillary thyroid cancer is usually easier to treat than other oncological diseases, it is the so called "good cancer" (although patients hate this term), grows slowly and comparatively has very good survival rates, but in some cases it can definitely be terminal and not necessarily in old age. Still, the way she talks about it seems strange to me, there are a lot of uncertainties.
It would be really helpful to have a radiation therapist, endocrinologist or oncology surgeon comment on this case. I am just a patient, so I don't want to suggest something that may not be true.
Your input is very helpful. Yeah I would also love it if an oncologist who specializes in this stuff would come here and explain how she could have gotten to stage IV under the circumstances. Any doctor who comes here can post here anonymously. One thing I understand is the benign liver tumors generally have no symptoms and they are only caught when a person (like Candice-Marie) is going in for regular scans. I took that to mean that they generally did not require treatment, so I am still wondering why she "rejected chemotherapy" at that point.
DeleteI justed posted this on FB:
DeleteHi Candice,
First of all, congratulations on your NED aka remission status.
I am a fellow papillary thyroid cancer patient and I am very curious about your story. I am basing my questions on this article that you claimed you like a lot: http://www.express.co.uk/life-style/health/567190/Beat-cancer-eating-pineapples-woman-shuns-chemotherapy-self-medicate
Could you please clarify and publish the following information:
- Who gave you stage 4 diagnosis for papillary thyroid cancer? I am also of similar age as you and, as far as I know, people below age 45 cannot have a stage higher than stage II: http://www.cancer.org/cancer/thyroidcancer/detailedguide/thyroid-cancer-staging. Can you please publish a document where the stage of your cancer is listed? This should be visible on any hospital record, it is very basic information and you should not have to look for it for a long time.
- Do you know that radioactive iodine treatment keeps on working for 6-12 months after it has been administered and keeps killing any remaining thyroid cells and decreasing cancer marker numbers? The article said: "Recent tests showed her cancer was at a 0.2 level – just 0.1 above they expected healthy level, and in the normal range for healthy people." I assume this refers to Thyroglobulin, which is the marker for differentiated thyroid cancer, including papillary thyroid cancer such as yours. Such decrease in the marker and disappearance of tumors is just what radioactive treatment does, it is really great that way! Pineapples might be tasty, but they didn't have anything to do with this.
- You corrected previous information about cancer spreading to liver, as those were benign tumors. Do I understand correctly that the only confirmed spread you had was to the neck lymph-nodes? If so, what doctor offered you chemotherapy, when and what was the explanation for it? Do you have any documentation for rejecting chemotherapy? Usually, when a patient rejects an important part of their therapy, this is noted in their documents to protect doctors from further litigation. As far as I know, chemo is only used when RAI no longer works or a patient is RAI-avid (resistant to this form of treatment), and from your TGB results it would seem that RAI works very well. If within 6 months after the first RAI treatment all tumors had disappeared, why would anyone suggest you need chemo?
I am very familiar with all the fear and stress, how unpleasant being hypothyroid is, how scary biopsies, surgery, RAI and waiting for results can be. Please don't make it all worse by putting out false claims and digging yourself into a hole like Belle Gibson did, you really don't need this. Smoothies, pineapples and positive thinking can still be a great thing, if you don't create business based on a claim that they cure cancer.
We can all guess how long it will take for it to disappear.
I believe Candice-Marie that she had thyroid cancer. I never had an issue with that part of her story, as thyroid cancer is treatable and she admitted that her thyroid cancer was successfully treated using surgery and radiation. The part of the story that I took issue with was her treatment of liver cancer (wherein she was given five years to live) using pineapple juice.
ReplyDeleteHey Violet, where did she post this about her liver cancer actually being benign tumors? I'm not seeing it.
ReplyDeleteOn her healthycandy Facebook page, March 31 at 10:29am. It starts out:
Delete"Thanks to the Daily Express <3 I LOVE THIS ONE!! :) Thanks to The Daily Express for publishing my story. However I would like to clear up a few errors in these articles..."
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Healthycandyme/298350183626122?fref=photo
On her post there she says "the five tumours found in my liver were thankfully benign".
ReplyDeleteIt intrigues me that many followers of woo and 'wellness' are ready to see all sorts of conspiracy theories about doctors, medical research and big pharma, and question their vested interests constantly. (Of course vested interests should always be questioned, but they usually do it in a very simplistic way, with little actual evidence.) At the same time, these people blindly accept rubbish from ACTUAL scammers selling books and apps and treatment protocols, without any question at all. Why does their propensity for seeing conspiracies everywhere suddenly turn right off? This is so interesting to me. Signed, Daphne.
ReplyDeleteI agree, it is fascinating. I think it has something to do with what people perceive as "authority figures".
DeleteYes, I think you are right Violet. Certainly Belle Gibson was big on suspicion of "the Government". The trouble is, when facing cancer, you do have to depend a lot on authority figures. You are asked to rely on a whole lot of people that are generally smarter than you (ie doctors, medical researchers) and with a lot of accumulated knowledge that they don't have time to download to you. Even when you try and learn about it yourself, eg via the internet, you come across a lot of information that is information for fellow doctors and medical researchers, and hard to understand and interpret for your particular circumstances.
DeleteLooked at this way, it is not surprising that some people gravitate to the pineapple theory of cancer, as it is simple and easy to understand.
By comparison. reality-based medicine is usually complex, with many variables and also many unknowns. Daphne.
Yes it reminds of when Jessica Ainscough said that Gerson therapy just "made sense" to her, and that when she was told she needed to amputate her arm she said, "none of this made any sense to me". It does seem that fantasy-based medicine does a great job of describing their treatments in such a way that is makes sense to people. What did Mark Simon do? Didn't he say that cancer was "like a bacterial infection"? Again, a cancer quack has found a way to describe cancer in a way that "just makes sense" to the lay person.
DeleteSame here, Daphne. Pharmaceutical companies are constantly demonized in a way that manufacturers of things-that-aren't-medicine are not.
ReplyDeleteSure, the way pharmaceutical companies report (or fail to report) clinical trials needs an overhaul, as Ben Goldacre explains in Bad Pharma. But the accusation that they can't be trusted because they make huge profits is silly. I don't see too many manufacturers of vitamins, minerals, herbal remedies, "detox" products, and the like giving their wares away for free or even selling them at cost price. The purveyors of homeopathy, in particular, rake in staggering profits for a product which is literally nothing more than water and sugar pills. Big AltMed is just as big as Big Pharma.
Thank you Karen. It is essential to encourage people to think critically about Big AltMed just as they think critically about Big Pharma. I think this is an important part of promoting reality-based medicine, just as important as the science and evidence base arguments. The reality is there are vested interests everywhere. Daphne
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