By Pam McGaffin

The first cancer doctor to look at David Matthews' lungs told him point blank there was little medicine could do.

Even with chemotherapy, Matthews' life expectancy could be measured in months. The doctor's advice? Buy a big, juicy steak on the way home and enjoy what little time was left.

Matthews didn't get the steak, but he did get a second - and more optimistic - opinion. A year and a half later - about the time he was predicted to die - his advanced-stage lung cancer has shrunk to almost nothing and he's feeling better by the day.

"The first time they checked and told me the tumor was shrinking, I knew I made the right choice," Matthews said of his decision to go to Seattle Cancer Treatment and Wellness Center, despite the fact that it was 300 miles from his home in Eugene, Ore.

Now Matthews finds himself wondering how two doctors can look at the same cancer and be so far apart.

One difference, says Matthews' oncologist Nick Chen, lies in the Treatment Center's integrated approach to cancer treatment. Instead of focusing on one possible solution, the Center combines oncology with complimentary therapies such as Chinese herbs, naturopathy, acupuncture and mind-body medicine.

"When we find every option we have, integrate everything we have, the odds of survival can be improved," Chen said. Although no case is typical, many of the center's patients with advanced lung cancer have lived more than a year longer than the statistically predicted nine months, he said.

Mark Gignac, the naturopathic physician treating Matthews, says most doctors consider stage-four cancers to be incurable and pull out early, when they could treat it as a chronic, long-term disease.

"A criticism that might be leveled against us is that we're offering false hope," he adds, "but we don't tell patients we're going to cure them, we just don't look at a prognosis as an excuse for not trying."

Matthews, a 59-year-old grandfather of three, knows he may never be tumor-free, but he's hoping for a remission to extend his life.

He's grateful that neither of his two grown sons, David and Daniel, took up cigarettes even though he smoked around them when they were young.

"I'm sorry I did," he says.

Matthews was only nine years old when he took his first puff. During lunchtime at school, he and his friends would go down to an alley and smoke.

In fact, all the kids he knew growing up in Coos Bay, Ore., smoked, as did his parents and two older siblings. His brother, a life-long smoker, eventually died of cancer.

Matthews worked up to a two-pack-a-day habit. Then one day, when he was about 30 years old, he took a deep breath that "hurt like hell" and was filled with fresh resolve to quit.

He had a four-cigarette relapse two weeks later, but unlike many smokers, was able to kick the habit after that. He's been nicotine-free since, but those early years as a smoker increased his risk of developing lung cancer, Gignac says.

Early last year, Matthews was shoveling dirt when he experienced a sharp pain above his right shoulder blade. Thinking he'd pulled a muscle, he went to see his general practitioner, who told him to go home and rest.

When the pain didn't go away, the doctor x-rayed Matthews' chest and found a seven-centimeter tumor on his left lung. A biopsy confirmed cancer.

His first oncologist gave Matthews a grim prognosis: a year and a half with chemotherapy, three to eight months without. With stage-four lung cancer, there's not much hope, the doctor said, before suggesting the steak dinner.

Matthews left that day, feeling like he'd been given a death sentence, but he didn't give up. On the advice of his daughter-in-law whose mother was being treated for ovarian cancer, he made an appointment at Seattle Cancer Treatment and Wellness Center.

"I didn't have too much choice," Matthews said. "I was going to die."

He was encouraged when Dr. Chen told him he thought he could get his cancer under control. Over the next 18 months, Chen put Matthews on three different chemotherapy drugs, changing the drug each time the cancer stopped responding.

Matthews also saw Gignac and a Chinese doctor for complimentary therapies, including herbs, vitamin supplements and a diet heavy on fruits and vegetables. Combined, the treatments help fight the cancer, boost immunity and buffer the harsh effects of the chemotherapy, Gignac said.

The one-two-three punch appears to be working.

Not only did the latest scan show no evidence of new disease, the largest of Matthews' tumors has shrunk to three millimeters, a "minimal" size, and some of his tumor nodules have disappeared entirely, Chen said.

That gives Matthews reason to hope.

And hope is one of the most powerful medicines of all, according to Gignac.

Noting Matthews' weekly 300-mile trips into Seattle for treatment, Gignac says, "There's a person who's motivated."

No case is typical. You should not expect to experience these results.