Tag Archives: Reason

Anger May Be Cathartic, But It Is Still Bad For You

Cancer, Fear, Health and Wellness, Reason, , , , ,

Being honest about our emotions is not always easy. Add a chronic or terminal illness into the mix and things always seem to get tougher. Sadness, self-pity (or loathing), denial, depression and, of course, our friend Anger, all come out to play.

Emotions can bubble up unexpectedly, violently, or simmer beneath the surface. They can trip a person up, derail a perfectly calm and pleasant morning, confuse everybody in the room and change just about any dynamic without a glimmer of grace or sense of appropriate timing. Emotions run counter to that thread of logic that many of us cling to for sanity, bubbling and popping and roiling all over our bodies like some adolescent’s acne. Yet, quite unlike the exquisite release of a properly ripe whitehead, venting our emotions can be done in decent company and in a healthy, scar-free manner — as long as anger does not get the upper hand.

The first thing to realize is that we are not fully in control of how we feel. We can work on our frame of mind constantly, quite successfully, and still not be 100% in charge.

Continue reading Anger May Be Cathartic, But It Is Still Bad For You →

Enemies Are Bad

Cancer, Health and Wellness, , , , , , , ,

In my quest to reframe the narrative on Cancer, I sometimes feel that there are few voices in the media that support my views. How refreshing, then, when a friend points me in the direction of a piece like this brief podcast. It takes the edge off the words blazing across the publications set out at the oncology waiting rooms across the nation.

The Magazine "Cure" for cancer patients, survivors and caregivers, and a flier for Breast Cancer Survivors
Actual magazines and fliers from a waiting room

I am not saying that patients are not allowed to view themselves as survivors if that is somehow empowering to them and their particular struggle, but the term is another example of the “war metaphor” that dominates the dialogue and casts the cancer “battle” in a negative, pre-defeated light.

Like too many things in our media culture, the narrative on cancer has been driven in a lazy and convenient fashion for many years. Certainly when the War on Cancer was declared by President Nixon over 40 years ago, it was an apt analogy. Cancer research was still in its relative infancy, even after half a century of good scientific inquiry and thousands of years of anecdotal analysis, folk medicine and traditional therapies being attempted. Since 1971, the story has been changing, evolving on an almost constant basis.

Continue reading Enemies Are Bad →

Changing the Narrative Through Language

Politics, Reason, , , , , , , , , ,

In conversation with my mother, we began talking, as we often do, about politics. She related to me a story about how at a dinner party recently the topic of Ted Cruz came up and how he was receiving support from some of the more conservative members of the dinner party. One of the things that they raised as a positive issue was his opposition to gay marriage, in spite of the fact that, apparently, there were several gay or lesbian friends at this party. That alone seemed pretty uncool, but tact isn’t the point here. My mother’s response was that it isn’t the place of the government to police lifestyle options or the choice of homosexuals to publicly live that way. This is where I put the breaks on the conversation. Lifestyle options and choice are not matters that truly, empirically figure into the equation of whether homosexual, transgender or bisexual individuals are deserving of the same rights and privileges of their sexually straight counterparts, by which I mean fellow citizens. These words are linguistic tools that actually hamper the progress of our understanding by being misleading and, ultimately serve to enforce the stereotypes that the Far Right uses to suppress rights of individuals. As long as the narrative remains unchanged, progress does not occur. Continue reading Changing the Narrative Through Language →

The Chemo Diaries Round Six: Cycles End, Cycles Begin

Cancer, Health and Wellness, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Going into the final round of what I term Phase One of my treatment, I am reflecting a bit on two coincidences that have given me plenty to ruminate on. One of these is the fact that of one of my high school friends who I have not seen in far too many years informed me recently that her spouse is also going through chemotherapy and, interestingly, was just about a week ahead of me in the treatment schedule. The other coincidence of merit this week is that my neighbor will be starting her own chemo treatments at the same time I go in to complete my initial run of this badass toxic cocktail before moving toward a kinder and gentler maintenance schedule.

image
Ready for my hook up, Nurse!

Neither of these coincidentally timed treatments are for the same cancer, which would have been too weird for believability anyway, and we probably won’t share identical side effects across the board or react too similarly to the drugs, but there is still a commonality of experience that cannot be denied. My friend from high school is one of those rare and thoughtful people who is cursed with the right balance of kindness and patience to really place herself in the center of care giving. It feels weird saying this, but I would not wish that upon anyone, as great a gift as it is. This goes back to my issue with patient guilt, perhaps; I feel lacking when I cannot help those suffering worse than me or I feel guilty about not suffering as much as them, and this extrapolates to me not wanting others to suffer as a result of my condition or being forced to take care of me. Continue reading The Chemo Diaries Round Six: Cycles End, Cycles Begin →

Cancer Statistics Show Hope, But Statistics Are Still Bad For You

Cancer, Health and Wellness, , , , , , , ,

So… the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have now begun releasing survival rate statistics for patients with invasive cancer. And it appears to be pretty good news, especially for prostate, breast and colorectal cancer patients. Across the board, however, patient longevity has been on the rise and the one thing that the statistics do make clear is that what they term “survival rates” are increasing.

I am not a fan of “survival” as a description of continuing to live while dealing with cancer. Along with statistics in general, this sort of terminology paints a narrow and misleading picture Continue reading Cancer Statistics Show Hope, But Statistics Are Still Bad For You →

Alternative and Complementary Cancer Treatments: Good, Bad and Ugly

Cancer, Health and Wellness, , , , , , , , , ,

An article by Victoria Stern, MA published on the Medscape website in September, 2014 details information on many complementary and alternative cancer treatments. Because not all my readers are likely to have subscriptions to Medscape, and because the article is rather long, I am going to summarize a lot of it here. The comments and opinions below are my own unless cited, and I am not a doctor; the information on studies and data comes primarily from the Medscape article and it, along with Medscape in general, is worth reading if you sign up.

The takeaway on complementary vs alternative treatments remains consistent with what I would refer to as, Continue reading Alternative and Complementary Cancer Treatments: Good, Bad and Ugly →

Survival Rate Statistics and What They Don’t Tell You

Cancer, Health and Wellness, Reason, , , , , , , , , ,

The other day I was having a discussion and it came to light that statistics had been bandied about quite early in my post-diagnostic journey. Now, I’m no stranger to statistics, but odds are that, whether you realize it or not, most of you are. That is not to say you have never heard any quoted or identified yourselves among some figure cited here or there… The truth is, one way or another, we are all statistics. And that means, well, virtually nothing. Moreover, even if one out of ten of us understands that even if the median reader gave up two sentences ago and clicked off this page, some readers will actually read most or maybe even all of what I am typing up here, this understanding is still only a basic understanding of a type of statistical qualifier and hardly bridges the gap between acquaintance and friend.

Which is all just a very wordy way of saying that statistics should only be read when one is prepared to interpret them, and while interpreting them it is important to remember that they often cannot highlight a “truth” without refined analysis. Such is the case with the statistical survival rates of adenocarcinoma, my particular flavor of cancer.

By the time I had received my diagnosis, Continue reading Survival Rate Statistics and What They Don’t Tell You →

Language Is Your Enemy: Why Terminology Matters

Fear, , , , , , ,

Our culture has recently dipped into a new low when it comes to the context of our words. One could blame Twitter or the general dumbing down of literature or reality TV, but the sad implication of our times is that society has largely grown intellectually lazy. This is hugely important to understand, because, like it or not we still communicate predominantly with words. Emoji simply cannot express the full range of our experience, and even if they could, eventually it would be clear that they are still just avatars for words or expressions and our verbal language still matters.

But why does terminology matter so much?

Let us examine one word so often used to describe the cancer patient who is living beyond his or her treatment and consider why it is so insidious: survivor.
Continue reading Language Is Your Enemy: Why Terminology Matters →

Just Because It Works In a Dish Does Not Mean It Is A Cure

Cancer, Health and Wellness, Reason, , ,

In cancer research, there are a multitude of reasons why a compound may look promising for use in a cancer drug. Passionate and caring people put countless hours into looking for new ways to disrupt the biological processes of cancer cells that won’t harm healthy cell development. Theory after theory must be tested and then move from paper arguments into the laboratory. The first step in the lab will be along the lines of testing a culture of human cancer cells in a little petri dish under a microscope. Then, if that step is successful, growing tumors on mice to see if those can also be effectively killed off while leaving the mice unharmed. And yet, for still another multitude of reasons, successfully killing cancer in a dish or on mice does not mean that substance is an effective cure for human cancer.

Here is a brief explanation of why. Continue reading Just Because It Works In a Dish Does Not Mean It Is A Cure →

Nutritional Advice: Sometimes It Doesn’t Feed You

Cancer, Health and Wellness, , , , , , , , , , , ,

When people believe that you are not healthy, they often want to give you really genuine advice about what they believe will make you better. In a way, this is one of the nicer aspects of human nature. And many people truly, fervently believe that their advice is not only worthwhile, but absolutely correct to almost mystical proportions. This can be especially true of information that is not even relevant to the person’s direct experience, but instead is based entirely upon anecdotal information that the person simply, deeply wants to believe. And this is the problem with so much advice about how to get healthy: it is based on belief and not on knowledge.

Diet is one of the first topics that is likely to come up when talking about cancer treatment. There are a lot of good reasons for this, including
Continue reading Nutritional Advice: Sometimes It Doesn’t Feed You →