Ah, blessed rain! So as I sit and wait for the smell of supper to lure me away, I will write a short update to you all. (Well, OK. Short is relative, you know!)
-------------------
I had my three-month check-up with Dr. J on September 20th. I wasn’t at all anxious, going into the meeting. I had a nice, long initial chat with her nurse practitioner, first. She really gave me a thorough once-over, asking lots of questions and looking over my chest and remaining breast very thoroughly. All looks well.
But then she left and I waited for the doctor to come in and see me. The longer I sat there, the worse I began to feel. All the old feelings came back. The feelings of utter powerlessness, of uncertainty, of being helpless in the hands and according to the whims of another. My future. My welfare. Totally out of my control. As I wrote, later, on my wall on Facebook, there is a feeling that comes climbing up your throat and wants to emerge as either a scream or puke. That’s where I found myself.
It was harder than I expected…and I knew, sitting there, that this feeling was irrational. I know I’m in good shape. I feel good. My blood tests are good—liver enzymes only slightly elevated compared to last time, but still well within normal limits; tumor markers continuing to trend downward even further. I knew that all was well. No miscommunications with the nurse—in fact, a perfectly lovely visit with her. And still I felt this way. Clearly, I told myself, this was the PTSD talking. I tried to take slow, deep breaths and force my logical mind to take control over my bubbling emotions.
When Dr. J finally came in there were three noteworthy things that happened.
First, she said that she thought I looked skinny, and she seemed concerned. There’s a condition called cachexia of cancer that some people get—uncontrolled weight loss and eventual muscle wasting. I knew that’s what she was thinking of. But I assured her that my weight has come off because I have changed the way I eat, and that if I eat enough handfuls of cashews (which are allowed, on my diet), I will get the weight back. I told her that I would like to lose another 10-15 lbs. and then hold there. If I find that I can’t hold, but continue to lose…then we’ll be concerned.
The second thing that happened was that she referred to my changing my medical oncology treatment from Dr. C to Dr. A. She said, “We’ll see if you like Dr. A.” I said that it wasn’t a matter of my not liking Dr. C, and then I said, “But…you roll with the punches.” And she said, “That’s right.” And she changed the subject.
This little exchange left me feeling very unsettled. As if Dr. J thinks that I was not happy with Dr. H, so I changed to Dr. C. Then I wasn’t happy with Dr. C, so I changed to Dr. A. But that’s not the way it was, at all. I changed from Dr. C because she told me she didn’t want to be my oncologist. It wasn’t my idea. It was hers. I just honored her request.
The third thing that happened was that Dr. J refused to take a copy of my “treatment directives” or to comment on them, other than to say, “I think we all know what you want.”
I eventually brought the conversation around, again, to the question of my treatment goals. I asked her if she could give me any reasons why aggressive treatment, in the event of recurrence, was NOT a good idea. She said no. I said, “None at all?” I am continuing to read about metastatic breast cancer, and I’m coming to understand what an argument might be for a slightly less aggressive approach, after all. But she just said no, and that it’s too early to go there and she won’t go there with me right now but will discuss it with me if/when the time comes.
I know that doctors have broad, philosophical reasons for doing things in certain ways rather than other ways. You wouldn’t tell a medical student that they can’t learn anything about how to treat metastatic cancer until they encounter it in a patient, and then they will be taught what to do. No, you would teach a medical student how metastatic cancer is approached, in general, and why. Then you take the instruction down, from there, into more specific hypothetical scenarios. And eventually these scenarios get applied to real patients, adjusting for individual circumstances.
It bothers me a lot that doctors are reluctant to speak in these broad terms to patients, in order to give them a big-picture view of what the future looks like if certain eventualities occur, and why the big-picture view is drawn the way it is.
Fortunately, I have time. I am not metastatic. Yet.
But look at me. I’ve been reading up on this for several months now, trying to get comfortable with what the most likely course of events will be, should I become metastatic. Trying to get comfortable with how things will be approached. Trying to figure out what I want to have happen. Can you imagine what it would be like if, instead of me trying to get comfortable with this at my leisure, now, when there’s no pressure to DO SOMETHING, I had to try to get comfortable with all of this within a week or two so that I could start some kind of treatment?
Last year’s diagnosis came as a big, big surprise, and the learning curve was impossibly steep. It contributed significantly to my feelings of being out of control and totally at the mercy of forces beyond me. I’m all about trying to avoid having those really, really steep learning curves facing me in the future. I wish my doctors could see the usefulness of this, for me, rather than doing everything they can to push that learning curve off into the future, like they do for most other patients, as if the learning curve then would be of no great consequence for me. Don’t they ever learn from the past?
Anyway…Other than these little issues that came up, I did my best to keep the tone of the meeting upbeat and positive. I feel fine. I think I’m doing fine. The blood work seems to indicate that I’m doing fine. All is well. I hoped to leave Dr. J with a good impression of me as a recovering patient, upbeat, positive, looking to the future—a model patient that anyone could like. Hoping that these impressions would filter their way down the clinic grapevine.
-----------------------
When I got home, though, I was so depressed that I fed the animals and laid down on the couch to disappear into the oblivion of sleep as quickly as possible. When I woke up the next morning, I had decided I couldn’t let it pass uncommented. I knew that I could not force them to educate me, if they refuse to do so. But I could correct errors in their perceptions of what had been going on. I wrote this to Dr. J:
I want you to understand that I did not dislike Dr. C. She indicated to me, on
more than one occasion, that she was uncomfortable being my doctor. At our
meeting in late June she bluntly told me she thought I'd be happier with someone
else. It was very clear she wanted me to leave her. I was devastated. I felt
that if I'd just refused treatment a year earlier, this would all be about over
and I wouldn't have to try to do this any more. But I honored her request. I
asked for a change of doctors. As I said, though, it was not my idea to do so.
It was hers. And my liking her or not had nothing to do with it.
Two days later Dr. J wrote back to say thanks for letting her know. (Like she didn’t, really?)
------------------------
There was one other thing that happened in my doctor visit on the 20th. When the nurse and I talked, she was very understanding and very supportive of my fatigue issues. I explained that I’m trying to work about 20 hours per week now and hope to get up to 30 hours per week by early November. I said that women on the IBC listserv have warned me not to try to go too fast, but to take my time and heal properly. They’ve told me it can take from 12-18 months to get your energy levels back up to normal. The nurse said that she’s had patients tell her it’s more like 2 years before they wake up one day and realize that their old self is back. It was nice to be validated like that.
When Dr. J came in and asked about fatigue, I told her the same things. She said that she thinks a 12- to 18-month timeline for recovery is exaggerated. Needless to say, I felt very discouraged. What happens if I don’t meet her expectations for full recovery of my energy in a year or less?
Still, as I said, I tried to keep the tone of the meeting upbeat and positive….
----------------------
This afternoon I was going through my email inbox and either deleting or saving old messages. I found a lot of old messages in there that contained questions I had asked of my treatment team last year. It was dismaying to see the number of questions that never did get answered.
People tell me that this blog would make a good book. I’m very flattered, and I do consider doing that. But reading through these old posts makes me realize that shaping all of this material into a book would also be very challenging emotionally. I don’t know whether it would be cathartic, in the end, or just a reliving of recent traumas and sadnesses. Maybe a mixture of both?
-----------------------
My self-education into the ways of cancer and cancer treatment continue. I’ve recently been reading about what is called the “tumor bed effect.” Turns out, when the doctors warn you about the possible side-effects of radiation therapy or chemo, they don’t tell you the full story. They tell you selected parts of it. They mention the big possible side effects––blistering skin, radiation pneumonitis.
In undertaking treatment, it is just an understood thing between the patient and the doctor that there are no guarantees that the treatment will work. Of course. That makes sense. What is most illuminating––what is not explained––is why it might not work. It’s because of the tumor bed effect.
One reason that a radiation treatment (or chemo, but apparently the effect is more pronounced with radiation) might not work is that it just might not hit and/or kill all of the cancer cells. That’s pretty understandable. You hope it does, but it might not. I think everyone understands this, going in.
Another reason that a radiation treatment might not work is that the radiation also hits normal, healthy cells and changes them in ways that make the micro-environment around surviving cancer cells more friendly to cancer growth, giving them better growing conditions. The real kicker is, these more friendly local growing condition contribute not just to the cancer’s local expansion again, but to its ability to migrate out of the local area and into the rest of the body. To metastasize. That’s the tumor bed effect. (See “The Tumor Bed Effect: Increased Metastatic Dissemination from Hypoxia-Induced Up-regulation of Metastasis-Promoting Gene Products,” Clinical Cancer Research, Volume 65(6), 3-15-2005, pp. 2387-2396.) This is not discussed as a possible consequence of undergoing radiation treatment. I think it ought to be.
Cancer cells seem to grow not just by bulldozing their way through healthy tissues, multiplying out of control, taking up vital nutrients that healthy cells should be getting, and refusing to die. Cancer also seems to grow by subterfuge—by tricking some kinds of healthy cells, including parts of your own immune system, to produce substances that help cancer grow. This happens as a normal part of the aberrant growth process that is cancer. (See “The Hallmarks of Cancer,” Cell, Volume 100, 1-7-2000, pp. 57-70.) In a nutshell, it is what happens, too, in the tumor bed effect. But with an added boost.
If the tumor bed effect occurs as a result of radiation treatment, what you can wind up doing is actually enhancing this aberrant growth process so that any cancer cells that may have survived irradiation have an even better chance of eventually growing back locally and then metastasizing. In short, your radiation treatment may (everyone hopes) help to cure you by killing off the cancer cells. But if it doesn’t, it may also make the cancer more virulent than before. No one tells you that this might happen. I think they should.
It’s all a matter of relative risk, I think. The known benefits of undergoing radiation therapy, versus the known risks of doing nothing, versus the possible risks of creating a tumor bed effect.
----------------------------
It is believed that the mechanism of action in the tumor bed effect has to do with how ionizing radiation creates conditions of lowered concentrations of oxygen in tissues that are hit. Hypoxia. The hypoxia causes certain genes to kick in and produce certain proteins, which wind up being exactly the kinds of proteins that help to promote metastasis.
But conditions of hypoxia are not only created by radiation treatments or by chemo. It is a common characteristic of solid tumors (as compared to blood tumors) to have areas of cells that are hypoxic––that do not have a normal oxygen pressure gradient within or around them. These hypoxic cells are particularly resistant to the effects of chemo or radiation, which means that any tumor having many of these kinds of cells is likely going to be quite difficult to treat successfully. (See the above article from Clinical Cancer Research, plus “Review: Implications of In Vitro Research on the Effect of Radiotherpay and Chemotherapy Under Hypoxic Conditions,” The Oncologist, Volume 12, 2007, pp. 690-712.)
As a result of reading all of these things, I’ve begun to wonder about the usefulness of increasing the levels of oxygen available in my body. I would do this in order to support my healthy cells, in order to deprive any remaining cancer cells that might be floating around of any kind of favorable microenvironment for further growth, and to make any remaining cancer cells more susceptible to the treatments I’m still taking. The question is, how should I try to do this?
Improved oxygenation is probably one reason why studies show that breast cancer patients can cut their risk of recurrence in half by engaging in aerobic exercise for 30 minutes a day, five days a week. So I could exercise. (I’m trying to build that into my life, now….sigh.)
I could do pranayama yoga, which focuses on various breathing techniques—some of them very vigorous and oxygenating!
I could try to find a hyperbaric oxygen chamber and sit in it for a few minutes every week.
I could have ozone therapy, in which some kind of ozone would be injected intravenously. (I understand this is very expensive! For that matter, hyperbaric oxygen probably is, too.)
Or I could take oral food-grade hydrogen peroxide. I’m giving this some serious thought. It has the advantage of being fairly cheap (unlike my supplement regimen, which even at ½ what my nutritionist wants me to take is still costing me an average of $200 per month).
Before I do anything, I need to investigate the interactions between the anti-oxidants I’ve been taking as a part of my supplement regimen and the oxygen I would be taking in. I’ve read briefly in one place that the two do not cancel each other out…but I need to look into this more thoroughly. I certainly won’t be changing my supplement regimen for the sake of taking H2O2––clearly the regimen has been working very well for me. It’s for that reason that I need to investigate taking H2O2 more carefully. I don’t want to upset a plan that seems to be working!
-------------------------
In reading about the tumor bed effect, I’ve had to read about the experiments they’ve done to understand hypoxic tumors. They do these experiments by causing tumors in mice, then “sacrificing” or “euthanizing” the mice at 28 and 51 days after causing the tumors.
I read these studies and even though the work being done is to help maybe save my life some day…I find myself feeling very, very, very sad about the mice.
How would you like to be born and live your life in a tiny cage, forcibly subjected to radiation you didn’t need, forcibly caused to develop cancer, and then killed so they could study the cancer they gave you? The very thought makes my heart race ….
----------------------
I’ve continued my reading into the cell biology of cancer. Of course, I can’t understand this in anywhere close to all of its complexity, because I don’t have the necessary educational background. But I do understand a few things. Most importantly, I understand that cancer is not one disease; it’s about 100 different diseases that have certain gross similarities.
As “The Hallmarks of Cancer” article points out, the similarities among cancers can be grouped into six basic functional areas, all of which are governed not just by one process, but by several sets of processes. In other words, each functional area is over-determined; there are alternative pathways and back-up systems that make each functional area work the way it does. But sometimes key parts of the mechanisms that govern these functional areas go wrong or are overwhelmed by defects in the other parts, and cancer is the result. The functional areas are:
1. Growth: Cancer cells develop the ability to grow just because they want to,As the article points out, there are a variety of pathways to the development of cancer, and defects in these pathways can happen in a variety of sequences and give rise to different kinds of cancer cell types, even within a single tumor. The bottom line, take-away message, for me, is that cancer is the result of an incredibly complex series of breakdown events within the human body. It is not a single, monolithic disease.
rather than based on signals from their local environment that usually regulate
cell growth.
2. Quiescence: At the same time, cancer cells develop the ability to block out anti-growth signals that are normally triggered when no more cell growth is needed in a given area of the body.
3. Apoptosis: Cancer cells develop the ability to ignore signals to die so that younger,
fresher cells can take over.
4. Replication: Cancer cells replicate over and over, rather than stopping after about 60-70 doublings, as normal cells do.
5. Angiogenesis: Cancer cells acquire the ability to instigate the growth of new blood vessels to supply themselves with nutrients.
6. Metastasis: Cancer cells acquire the ability to break free of the structural couplings that keep them attached in their local environment (that keep breast
cells in the breast, for instance) and move, instead, into more distant parts of
the body––metastasis. It is this ability that accounts for about 90% of all cancer deaths, rather than the growth of cancer cells in the local environments where they originated.
Therefore, any treatment that claims to be a “panacea” capable of curing any and all comers strikes me as a little suspicious. Yet this is exactly the kind of claim that is made for many alternative treatments, including the use of food-grade hydrogen peroxide.
------------------------
I have been spending a lot of time working on my PTSD issues from my childhood hospitalization and the events of last year, trying to understand how the one affected the other. Trying to figure out if I should have—or even could have—done anything differently, to have produced a different outcome. I don’t mean cancer outcome. I mean human outcome. Social interactions. The people I had to work with. Or try to work with.
In looking at tumor bed effects and hypoxia, I was reminded of a “book” that a friend sent me, early-on, about food-grade hydrogen peroxide. So I got it out and read it. The author calls H2O2 a panacea (his word)––able to cure just about any and all human ailments. It sounds just like so many other alternative health things I have read, over the years….
I felt myself getting irritated, sitting there and reading that book telling me that all I had to do to cure the cancer I had was drink H2O2 in my water every day. (It’s one thing to think about doing this as part of an integrative program, I think. But another matter entirely to rely on it as the sole treatment modality for cancer! Yet that is exactly what the author was advocating.)
It was then that I realized for sure that not only have I been battling with the PTSD of my childhood and the normal fears inherent in getting a cancer diagnosis, I have been struggling with a particular worldview about cancer treatment. A worldview that up until I was diagnosed with cancer made a great deal of sense to me, given the medical trauma in my past. But a worldview that has made it very, very difficult for me to try to relax and trust my doctors.
This is the worldview of the medical establishment that is propagated by too many people in the process of trying to promote whatever alternative health therapies they espouse. In my heart, that worldview has resonated with me, more often than not. I think it has affected, and continues to affect, how comfortable I am with the medical world––and most especially, with those who treat cancer.
------------------
Some of the literature about alternative cancer treatments is very good or reasonably good. I just read two really good articles about the use of 3,3-diindolylmethane (DIM) to cause cancer cells to arrest their growth and engage in apoptosis. These were articles in peer-reviewed medical journals (Molecular Cancer Therapy and Cancer Letters). I’ve been taking DIM for more than a year, based on the advice of (and research citations supplied by) my nutritionist. It was nice to see these articles in support of my decision to take this supplement.
Not all alternative treatments have the privilege of being the object of much study, though. I appreciate this, and I understand that a big reason is because there is little interest in potential treatments that are not patentable and thus financially lucrative for pharmaceutical companies. Even the relatively little research into alternative treatments that is funded by the government is often supported with an eye toward some private-sector company eventually being able to market the fruits of the researchers’ labors. So I understand that some good alternative treatments may exist out there that have limited experimental evidence behind them. I don’t think something should be ruled out just because it doesn’t have a Phase III clinical trial supporting its use––or even a Phase I trial!
But then again, too much of the written material that promotes alternative therapies is written like this book I was reading on food-grade hydrogen peroxide. It reads as much like a screed against the medical establishment as it does like a credible, reasonable statement in support of an alternative approach to a medical problem.
The author of the H2O2 book says that the book is based on “research” he has conducted, but he never reports on any of his own work. (I suspect it’s because it really doesn’t exist, in the sense of laboratory or clinical work.) He talks vaguely about studies others have done or speaks in general terms about the thousands of doctors in Europe who use food-grade H2O2, but never once provides any citations to these studies. The bibliography of the book consists of 12 entries, half of which come from journals that appear to be medically oriented, the other half of which appear to be popular publications (some self-published?). So in terms of documenting the claims he makes, the author does an incredibly poor job.
What is worse is the rhetoric that is used to present the idea that food-grade hydrogen peroxide might have health value. He starts by criticizing ancient medicine for relying on appeals to authority in matters of healing, rather than something more substantial. But then he points out that the 20th century’s reliance on the scientific method and evidence-based medicine is problematic, too, because it has led to the establishment of treatment protocols that have suppressed alternative approaches to medicine. If this left us with only evidence-based treatments, it might be somewhat forgivable. But unfortunately, it’s not that simple, since the scientific method that gives rise to the “evidence,” is, itself, flawed by the researcher’s tendency to see the results he or she expects to see (confirmation bias). The author goes on to point out that medicine has become too complicated, dividing the human body into organ systems and specialty medical practices that prevent doctors from seeing the whole patient as a system.
He protests, at this point, that he doesn’t mean to discredit doctors or medical institutions, but only wants to point out that our medical system is ineffective because it focuses on illness rather than wellness, promotes expensive and dangerous procedures and products, and ignores simple, natural, inexpensive procedures and products. He says that most drugs don’t cure disease, but only alleviate symptoms, and almost all of them have side-effects. They are used, he says, because of the multi-million dollar advertising campaigns of the pharmaceutical companies that manufacture them.
And all of this he says in just the first eight pages of the book.
For the next two pages he says that the body needs oxygen and that all disease is caused by lack of adequate oxygen in the body, and he says that the rest of his book will provide solid proof of this. Yet as I mentioned above, the “proof” this author provided didn’t even come close to the kind of proof that the authors of the two articles on DIM provided. Instead, most of the rest of the book is given over to repeated dissing of the medical profession. The statements he makes are pernicious:
“Disease is big business…There is no incentive on the part of the pharmaceuticalThen there are eight pages wherein the author trashes “nutrition” as a big business, too, that is full of fads supported by nothing more than anecdotes. (I had to wonder at the author’s disingenuity, here. His book lacks research and citations and relies on broad, global claims that don’t even quite reach the level of anecdotes!)
industries to promote better health….The average business person in his right
mind wouldn’t dare walk away from such profits, and would do almost anything to
ensure that the trillion-dollar cash cow remains intact….As a result, the
pharmaceutical industry has assembled a pharma-cartel” (16).
“The pharmaceutical industry has more to gain when people are sick than when they are well. Therefore, they manufacture drugs that only relieve symptoms but do not
cure disease. There’s a vested interest in keeping people sick…yet…making themselves look like the savior of all mankind” (17). [Message: Don’t trust them. They don’t really want to cure you.]
“More people have died from preventable diseases [due to] the industry’s suppression of information about non-drug health alternatives that could have kept people from dying” (17). [Message: Be careful! They may kill you!]
“Pharmaceutical companies routinely use their power and unlimited financial resources to keep doctors from prescribing natural therapies…” (17).
“The Food & Drug Administration (FDA)…makes it a priority to promote drugs and the financial interests of pharmaceutical companies…because many of the FDA’s senior management and members of its advisory committees accept more than $50,000 apiece in corporate grants, contracts and consulting fees from pharmaceutical companies” (18).
“Fictitious diseases are ‘invented’ all the time by the pharmaceutical industry for no reason other than to sell prescription drugs” (19).
On page 32 the author exclaims that he was floored by the “mountains of evidence” showing that food-grade hydrogen peroxide is a useful treatment for myriads of human ailments and is used all over the world. But again…no citations for these mountains of evidence. No references to specific places in the world. Just global assertions.
Then he gets back into the mode of dissing conventional medicine:
Simple and effective therapies like H2O2 threaten the pharma cartel, so theyThere are then 15 pages of information about why H2O2 is good to use and some very general information about how to use it (in distilled water), only to lapse once more into a diatribe against the medical profession:
suppress the info, lobby against it or give information about it a negative
spin, sometimes going so far as to imprison people who promote it (32).
[Message: They are out to get you. Be careful!]
The medical industry and pharmaceutical industry don’t embrace H2O2 becauseA little bit more info about places and times where H2O2 has been used, then more dissing of the medical profession on page 58 and 59, using the same themes that he’s used before.
there is no financial incentive. And doctors’ livelihoods would be threatened if
virtually all diseases were to be eradicated so simply and inexpensively (47).
Finally, the author settles down into a lengthier discussion of how to use H2O2 in various forms for various ailments. But the book would not be complete if it did not end, again, with a series of slanders of the medical community:
The use of H2O2 would make the jobs of doctors and researcher unnecessary andThis, from the man who didn’t want to discredit doctors or medical institutions.
pharmaceutical companies would become superfluous. There’s no money to be made in simple answers. The doctors and pharmaceutical companies want to keep us
dependent on them (99). [Message: They don’t really want to help you; they want
to control you.]
“…in the meantime, the pharmaceutical and medical industries will continue to get rich while people die from ineffective and dangerous treatment options” (100). [Message: They may kill you with their “medicines.”]
A warning not to believe the negative spin that the medical and pharmaceutical industries will try to put on the use of H2O2 (100).
Medical students are deliberately not taught about simple life-saving methods (100).
Medical boards actively prevent doctors from using H2O2 in their practices (101).
“If the treatment were to be accepted today, the FDA and many others would have to take responsibility for the thousands of people who have died because they caused this vital information to be withheld form the public” (101). [Message: Doctors will kill you using the methods they have chosen to validate and promote.]
It comes down to money. Incomes are threatened by the use of something as simple as H2O2. The pharmaceutical companies will do just about anything to protect their financial interests (102).
Beware of “quack watchdogs” who are mostly strategic plants of the pharmaceutical companies with the intention of discrediting alternative therapies that gain popularity, brand the doctors who use these therapies as quacks, and “disseminate fabricated adverse effects” (104).
Pharmaceutical companies want to keep us in the dark and rob us blind (105).
---------------------
Over the years, I have had a few friends who are totally into alternative health and seem to believe that 99% of all doctors sit at the right hand of Satan himself. They have sent me info on alternative medicine, and I’ve often read it and sometimes filed it away for future reference.
One of the biggest bug-a-boos in the alternative medicine world is the fear of cancer. The Big C. So over the years I’ve had a chance to see a lot of alternative-slanted info about cancer prevention and cancer treatments that strike pretty much the same tone as the book on H2O2 that I described above. But in this case, the focus of this alternative medical info is on how doctors and pharmaceutical companies don’t want to cure cancer, they kill more people with their treatments than they cure, etc., etc., etc.
Imagine having been scared to death by doctors and hospitals when you were five years old. Then imagine having been steeped in this alternative medicine “don’t ever trust the medical establishment––especially when it comes to cancer” rhetoric for most of your adult years. Then imagine getting an aggressive, late-stage cancer.
---------------------
My worldview, the way I understood what I needed to do to take care of my body, came crashing down last year. I knew in a moment that despite the years of indoctrination about doctors (oncologists, in particular) sitting at the right hand of Satan, I had to submit to conventional treatments. This was too aggressive and too serious to rely solely on alternative measures.
Yet at the same time, I couldn’t just forget the trauma and couldn’t just ignore the warnings I’d been reading for decades about cancer treatment and how evil it is. I couldn’t relax. I couldn’t just blindly trust.
Confrontation with old traumas. Collapse of long-held worldviews. It was a difficult year.
I think that these things really impacted the interpersonal aspects of how that year unfolded. But I’m not at all sure what I should have or could have done differently. I am grieving that it all turned out the way it did. But I don’t know how I could have made my way through the process much differently.
Equally important, I don’t know how I will be able to make my way forward, into the future. I have oncology in my future for the rest of my life. With any luck, it will be a fading presence as time goes by. But maybe it won’t. Maybe it will return to be front and center again. If that happens, how can I make things go differently next time?
As a part of my attempts to understand medicine more from its own point of view, like a good anthropologist, rather than from the point of view of those whose agenda involves a large amount of trashing it, I have been reading medical autobiographies. I’ve been focusing on stories doctors tell about how they got to be doctors. It is not comforting to read about the cases where they blew it––where they ignored something or made a wrong call, and someone died as a result. One book, written by an ER physician who practices just up the road, in Durham, says that every doctor kills an average of three patients during the years of his residency. The current edition of the Reader’s Digest has as its cover story “Doctors Confess Their Fatal Mistakes.”
Even if doctors in general, and oncologists in particular, do not sit at the right hand of Satan, it is frightening to think that I could be the victim of one of their mistakes. I could be one of some resident’s three deaths.
How do I find the ability to trust, in all this? But if I can’t find the ability to trust, how can I make any future “deep encounters” with the medical profession––especially oncologists––turn out differently than this year’s encounters have gone? I feel like I’m in a hopeless psycho-emotional quagmire.
------------------
One of the worst things about becoming a resident of Cancer Land is the people you meet there. Not the doctors and nurses, with their questionable relationship to Satan (LOL!), but your fellow residents, who you come to know and care about. When their lives take a turn for the worse, it makes you ache inside.
I have several breast cancer sisters here locally. Two of them are having problems. One is 33 years old. She finished up her breast cancer radiation treatment just two weeks after I did in the spring. This last week she was hospitalized with what appears to be the return of her cancer. It looks like it’s metastasized to her liver and her bones. She was on Zometa, too. The final word isn’t in yet, but it doesn’t look too good, right now.
The other friend is turning 40 tomorrow. She was hospitalized at the same time, in the same hospital, for symptoms that look like they might indicate permanent damage to her heart because of her breast cancer treatment, which she finished not too long ago.
If God were a fair God, he would not visit these kinds of afflictions on women who haven’t yet lived their full adult lives. They’ve fought once. That should be good enough for awhile. What’s happening to them is just not fair.
I am considering creating a screaming ritual. I’m sure it would catch on in some quarters. It would involve going to an area in the country where you wouldn’t disturb the neighbors, dancing in a circle, flipping the bird, and screaming at the Cancer God, “Leave her alone!”
--------------------
So there you have it. Doctor’s appointments, tumor bed effects, hypoxia and cancer growth, food-grade hydrogen peroxide, the rhetoric of some in the field of alternative medicine that paints oncologists (in particular) as servants of the devil, and friends beset by cancer and the permanent and serious after-effects from cancer treatments.
It is odd, then, to know that on more than one occasion, as I am traveling the 15-501 between Pittsboro and Chapel Hill, a peace has settled over me and life has seemed good. I can’t explain why this should be. But sometimes, it just is.
Print this article
No comments:
Post a Comment