Tag Archives: body

Parabens, Fear and Junk Science

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I was going to title this post “Why I Love Parabens.” I had been reading up on them lately for a number of reasons, mostly surrounding a largely unfounded controversy surrounding a type of lip balm my daughter had been using. In the case of the lip balm, the “paraben-free” product was being accused of harboring mold with the implication being that this was a manufacturing defect. Examination of the claims revealed, however, that the mold was most likely the result of misuse or poor storage of the product which, due to the lack of effective preservatives, would be expected to mold if it was exposed to moisture and kept in the dark. This does, however, beg the question as to why a lip balm, of all things, would be sold without effective preservatives to protect against mold.

The answer, of course, is the unwarranted vilification of parabens. The natural cosmetics industry, and perhaps more accurately the Environmental Working Group and other activist organizations have been disseminating information about parabens for over a decade now, describing how they are endocrine disruptors and probably cause cancer. And this is where we get to the point of where science is occluded by hype, to the detriment of the consumer, the patient, the regular person on the street… Continue reading Parabens, Fear and Junk Science →

Wrist wrapped for chemotherapy infusion

Infusions With Friends

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There is room for a great social media app here, so officially I’m announcing “Infusions With Friends” — everyone needs a game to play while they’re stuck in treatment and when you begin to realize how many people are not only going through chemotherapy at the same time as you, but often having their treatment on the same day, it just makes sense that we ought to be able to hook up and make a game out of it. And if for whatever reason, one or another of us cannot join in the treatment fun as scheduled, it still is nice to have a way to feel inclusive and play along from home.

Chemotherapy infusion tube taped to wrist
The free hand was holding a smartphone and could have been playing Infusions With Friends!

When I got up this morning, I anticipated that two of my friends were likely to be “joining” me in chemo today — one from a a state to the north, one well to the east. It felt good, like there was some camaraderie there, full of mutual encouragement and good times, opportunities to share the view on Facebook or comment on how the mornings were spent with family before going in. And I usually find room for a few jokes around a “cocktail” theme or to comment on the need for better spa services. Sure, my material is starting to wear a little thin, which is all the more reason to get an appropriate app to market quickly. And the play at home feature would have been especially useful for me today, as I discovered that neither of my friends would be joining in from their respective clinics. One was simply a scheduling difference — she goes in tomorrow. The other had some issues with his bloodwork; last week when the same issue prevented his treatment, I thought he had simply lucked out with a week-long vacation from treatment, and I was secretly excited to get him on my schedule because I’m selfish and bored sometimes. So here I was this morning, luxuriously relaxing in my heated, vibrating lounge chair, feeling vaguely lonely in spite of the cheerful nurses and their needles. Continue reading Infusions With Friends →

Myth of the Wellness Warrior, Part 2: Supplements, Denial and the Birthday Problem

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I’ve heard a lot lately about fears that a conspiracy is being perpetrated by the pharmaceutical industry and the government to keep natural cancer cures (and natural or holistic care in general) away from patients. It makes for a dramatic story with lots of Hollywood appeal, but examining the accusations leads down a more insidious path. To get there and understand the full extent of the problem, we need to step back and look at a range of sub-industries within the healthcare umbrella, what they provide and how they intertwine. We also need to understand some basics about statistics and probability that will clarify what some of the facts surrounding this conspiracy really mean. [And when you are done reading this, please continue on with the next chapter in this ongoing series.]

Supplementing the Truth

To begin with, let’s examine the hugely profitable supplements industry (mentioned in Forbes’ SportsMoney column as one of the fastest growing industries in the world). “Natural health” advocates and self-proclaimed gurus often have their own supplement brands which they sell as part of  treatment plans pushed on their web sites, or they have affiliate arrangements with a brand that they offer as being somehow superior to other brands. The supplement industry has grown from the notion that manufactured (or synthetic) vitamins could be used to supplement areas in the diet where a person was not able to consume adequate quantities to be healthy. In an indirect way, it can be traced back hundreds of years to the discovery that citrus fruit — particularly lemons — could prevent sailors from getting scurvy. It turned out that scurvy was a disease caused by a Vitamin C deficiency. By “supplementing” this vitamin, the disease could be avoided. Continue reading Myth of the Wellness Warrior, Part 2: Supplements, Denial and the Birthday Problem →

Girls Literature and the Culture of What’s Wrong With Me?

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I have a daughter and I care what she reads. From her earliest days, books have been an important part of her life. She’s ten now and I still read to her regularly, though she reads voraciously on her own (and far more than I ever was able as a child, since she reads like lightning when left to her own device-free devices). That kid can devour stories, though lately has taken to being very choosy with her time. If a book doesn’t hook her, it goes back to the library unfinished. She wants to be sucked in; once she is engaged she absolutely must finish. Because it matters, I am always concerned with the messages in the stories she finds most enticing.

When she chooses her books, her mother and I try to be aware of the content and whether there is an underlying theme of “what’s wrong with me?” running through the pages. More and more, it seems easy to identify this theme almost as its own genre in children’s and specifically girls’ literature. The seeds of necessary therapy are sown implicitly between the lines as books for these young readers guide them to feeling less than adequate, training them for a life of unnecessarily pursuing products to fix themselves. This is a predictable byproduct of corporate America, where publishing is largely controlled by conglomerates that feed revenue streams in any way possible. Branding and downstream profits are the backbone of our consumer culture. But feeding this beast is optional. Continue reading Girls Literature and the Culture of What’s Wrong With Me? →

The Chemo Diaries: The Worst Day

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With chemotherapy, there is one thing that is certain from cycle to cycle: there is always a dance between the predictable and the unpredictable. Which is to say, much of what a patient goes through can be anticipated, but there is always the possibility of a subtle or surprising change. We plan out our schedule as best we can based on previous experience, but sometimes — perhaps every time — we need to roll with how our bodies react.

Breakfast at my desk
Breakfast at my desk

I had my infusion on Monday (as is my preference). For the past year, it has been safe to say that Thursday (today) would be my “worst” day. I should be feeling the effects in my head and my gut right now, full force; I should be tired, irritable, woozy, even slightly sick to my stomach. I should be curled up on the couch or wanting very much to be there. But I’m eating a bagel at my desk and typing this and ruminating on going out for a burger. And I’m doing the household laundry, a whole week’s worth, but that’s another story.

My last chemo cycle was pretty close to normal, but I started feeling crappy a day early and finished feeling crappy a day early, all more or less. It improved that weekend, because I was more active and felt better by Saturday. I like that as a trend and hope that this weekend is quickly cleared up — especially because the weekend after my next infusion has a camping trip clearly written on the calendar. This is a precedent I can get behind. Yesterday, however, rather than having me feeling crappy a day early, I barely felt crappy at all. It is certainly enough to give me pause. But there may be a very obvious reason for why I’m feeling better (or at least less ill) this time around. Continue reading The Chemo Diaries: The Worst Day →

Talking About Life While Facing Death

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One of my more popular contributions to the Quora.com web site deals briefly with how we approach loss and watching a loved one die from cancer. This is a subset of one of the most important topics of my blog, the need to redefine the narrative of cancer. Stories that we hear and those we tell ourselves are very important in terms of how we approach and understand the world. For most of history, the narrative of cancer has been relayed in a fairly dreadful manner — and often rightfully so, because the story of the times was perhaps simply accurate. But the time we are living in now requires a reboot of that narrative, one with more optimism and hope and, more importantly than even that, a good, solid dose of actual science. Another thing that needs to be adjusted, I believe, is more of a societal approach to the empathy of death and dying and how that can be embraced as a natural, even welcome, component of life.

I am clearly not above the occasional inspirational bracelet.
I am clearly not above the occasional inspirational bracelet.

While this is a more complex issue than I can adequately address in this post, I am going to include a short answer I wrote on Quora about a year after my own diagnosis with lung cancer — at which time I had just about reached my “statistical” expectation for life expectancy with a Stage 4 diagnosis. You see, according to the abstract numbers you get through pretty much any Internet search on survival rates, Stage 4 lung cancer does not fair very well. If you believe the numbers, you’re just supposed to die. Quickly. So I did some “soul searching,” and came to terms with what dying might mean to me. Then I moved along because, for one thing, I know a little bit about reading statistics and it was clear that they did not apply to me. (My demographic, for one thing, was not properly represented, nor was the collection of treatments that had been introduced in the previous five to ten years, which is about how out of date most survival rate statistics are when you get them.) Besides, even if cancer was going to negatively impact my longevity, I still had a lot of living to do. And the plan remains to live long enough to die of something else. After all, there is no shortage of ways to exit this existence. The real question, ultimately, becomes not how or why we go, but what we do with our time here that matters. Continue reading Talking About Life While Facing Death →

Death in Threes and the Power of Words

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The common saying is that “they come in threes.” We’re talking about celebrity deaths, of course, and although this is typically the sort of nonsense that can be justified simply by shifting the period of inclusion so it always appears to be accurate, there is something eerily unique about this past week. Within nine days, we have had three prominent people of the same age whose deaths are blamed on cancer.

First, we had Ellen Stovall, age 69 and president of the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship. Technically, she died from complications related to cardiac disease, but the cause of her heart trouble is traced back to treatments she underwent 45 years ago for Hodgkin’s lymphoma. According to her obituary in the New York Times, she had a recurrence of the lymphoma in the 80s and then also discovered that she had breast cancer — about this time she also discovered a pamphlet from the organization she would later be president of, which introduced her to the term “survivor” as a replacement for the word that had been commonly used to describe cancer patients: victim. This subtle adjustment of language helped to give her drive and focus and to become a force in the next wave of cancer awareness. She died on January 5th.

Next came the news on January 10th that David Jones, better known as David Bowie, had died after an 18 month “battle” with an undisclosed cancer just two days after his 69th birthday. While his family declined to offer details, it was reported by the New York Times that the director of Lazarus, Bowie’s Broadway collaboration, mentioned liver cancer in an interview with Danish media. Whether this meant the cancer originated in the liver or had merely settled in that organ is not clear, keeping in tune with the varied enigmatic personas the performer was known for. However, not knowing the type of cancer adds not just to the mystique of David Bowie, but the general fear and uncertainty that the word “cancer” conjures on its own. Continue reading Death in Threes and the Power of Words →

How My First Year of Chemotherapy Changed My Christmas Wish for You

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The holidays are upon us and I am sitting at my keyboard two days after my latest infusion, my brain awash in a heady mix of chemo drugs and residual steroids. I can feel the moisture in my nasal passages dissipating as it tends to do at this time, my eyes drying up along with them. Food doesn’t taste as profound and I gravitate toward sweeter options just to find them more palatable, or more bitter options because that bitterness is only intensified. But aside from a slight sleepiness that keeps threatening to overtake me, I’m actually feeling pretty good, very happy and more or less alert… And I’ve been thinking about this whole holiday thing since I was in the chair at the clinic, watching the drip come slowly down that long tube.

Snowman Believe
This snowman has some good advice at his fingertips.

I’m a big fan of Christmas. Always have been. Not the commercial side of it, so much, but that is because consumerism and gluttony always rub me the wrong way. And not the religious side of it, so much, because dogma rubs me the wrong way, too. But the spirit of Christmas, that I do love. The concepts of peace, unification, giving — and taking the time with family and friends to focus on the love, joy and small miracles of life — these are very good things, indeed.

Every year I try to look at these positive elements (that should be) exemplified by the holiday. I think it is important to contemplate the meaning of Christmas, even from a secular perspective. This time around, there is little doubt that my views and my wishes have been influenced by my treatment. Here is my Christmas wish for you. Continue reading How My First Year of Chemotherapy Changed My Christmas Wish for You →

The Chemo Diaries: Year One Retrospective

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It has been slightly over one year since my diagnosis, and I am in my twelfth month of chemotherapy infusions. I find it fitting that this timing coincides with Lung Cancer Awareness Month. To celebrate, or honor, or whatever you do for these types of anniversaries or milestones, I have decided to take a look at the previous year in pictures. This isn’t so much a vanity issue, though you will notice that the pictures are basically just of me, usually smiling and trying to look presentable; the greater point of the images is to watch the progression (or, occasionally, lack of it) in my appearance from infusion to infusion.

In November of 2014, I received my diagnosis after several months of feeling ill (for mostly unrelated issues) and having little or no energy or stamina. Ironically, when the testing and scanning began in earnest in September, I had begun to incrementally improve. Every time I was irradiated for a glance within, I left the imaging center feeling better. My breath had been quiet short in August and September, but by October I was noticing an improvement — a small improvement, but enough of one to give me the notion that I was “getting better” from whatever was ailing me. Still, I wasn’t in the best of shape, and I had been spending the previous months worrying progressively more about just what could be going on in my lungs. I had spent more time doing research on the Internet than I probably spent in the college library system during my entire four-year stretch. (Okay, not just probably; I did not take advantage of the old stacks the way I should have, and that remains one of my biggest regrets about those college years — funny the things we grow nostalgic for as we “mature.”)
Continue reading The Chemo Diaries: Year One Retrospective →

Worried That Your Sandwich Will Cause Cancer?

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The World Health Organization recently released an important report about the cancer risks associated with eating processed meat in general and red meat in particular. The report itself, as I have commented, is quite valid and important when we discuss how overall health and dietary habits impact both the healthy population and cancer patients, alike. But does this mean our lunch is going to give us cancer? If we eat a meat sandwich to get us through the day, are we causing irreparable harm? As with most nutritional issues, we need to look at this from a less simplistic point of view and a focus on moderation.

To begin with, let us discuss the sandwich model by creating the model sandwich.

Image of a sandwhich layered with vegetables rather than a pile of meat.
One thin slice of processed lunchmeat tops a stack of arugula, avocado, tomato and hidden chili peppers. And one extra thin slice of cheese, folded to fit.

We get some insight from the WHO report about the populations that are most adversely affected by processed and red meat consumption. It has long been know that eating habits hold a lot of sway when it comes to healthy issues, cancer among them. And one of the most important places we see increases in disease is among the obese. There is a strong correlation between obesity and a high consumption of processed foods, including inexpensive meats such as hot dogs, lunch meat, salami, etc. What there is not a frequent correlation to, however, is an equal intake of vegetables and fruit, fresh or otherwise. Fiber plays a strong role in our digestive system, without which we are much more prone to a range of maladies. And fresh fruits and vegetables are nutritionally dense compared to processed foods, offering vitamins and minerals that are necessary for bodies to function properly, maintain good immune support and otherwise keep us in good health.  Continue reading Worried That Your Sandwich Will Cause Cancer? →