One central question you can always ask your doctor when you're being seen for a serious medical condition is this: if you were me, what treatment would you suggest?

If that kind of question doesn't get the best answer from your doctor -- regardless of "repair shop" drugs and mainstream ideas -- nothing will. The thing is this: many of those doctors will give you invaluable information if you behave like the perfectly-informed patient that we should all strive to be.

A study of oncologists found that nearly 75 percent of them would recommend a course of cancer therapy that themselves would undergo if cancer was a condition he or she had. The study revealed that 70 percent of colon cancer doctors would flat-out answer the question, while 20 percent would answer when pressed more by the patient.