This patient continued to take variations of the above prescription for 6
months, after which his general energy improved and he had no
recurrence of the cancer. His tongue lost its Purple colour and regained
its spirit on the root, and the pulse became much less Full, Slippery and
Wiry. He is still under treatment and he will probably need to be for
some time, until his pulse loses its Full, Slippery and Wiry quality
completely. From a Chinese perspective, this would indicate that the
cancer has definitely gone.Case History 20.3
Painful-Urination Syndrome: Kidney-Yang Deficiency-Male, Age 47
A 47-year-old man had been diagnosed as having carcinoma of the bladder 4 years before. This
had been operated on at the time and he had no symptoms for the following 3 years. After that,
he developed papillomas in the bladder. His symptoms included: burning on urination,
occasional blood in the urine, frequency and difficulty of urination, dark urine, backache, slight
dizziness and chilliness. He had been suffering from frequent urination for many years before he
developed cancer. On closer interrogation, in fact it transpired that he had two types of frequency
of urination: sometimes his urination was frequent, profuse and pale, and at other times he had a
frequent desire to urinate but his urine was scanty and dark.
His tongue was of a normal colour, slightly Pale on the sides, and had a dirty-sticky coating on
the root. His pulse was slightly Slippery, slightly Weak and particularly Weak on the left Rear
position.
Diagnosis The burning on urination, the dark urine with occasional blood and the
frequency and difficulty of urination, all pointed to Heat
Painful-Urination Syndrome. This occurred, however, against a
background of Kidney-Yang deficiency (slightly Pale tongue, chilliness,
Weak Kidney pulse and frequency of urination since childhood).
Treatment principle The treatment principle adopted was to resolve Damp-Heat in the
Bladder first, and then tonify Kidney-Yang. This patient was treated
only with herbs.
Herbal treatment The formula used initially was a variation of Ba Zheng Tang Eight
Corrections Powder and Xiao Ji Yin Zi Cephalanoplos Decoction. As
there is some overlap between the ingredients of these two decoctions,
they can be used in combination without an excessive number of herbs:
Bian Xu Herba Polygoni avicularis 6 g
Che Qian Zi Semen Plantaginis 6 g
Qu Mai Herba Dianthi 6 g
Mu Tong Caulis Akebiae 6 g