The right to chart one's own road map

During the past several years, I have "lost" many friends, diagnosed to have cancer, who passed away, after the aggressive medical treatment they got from various so-called cancer specialists, most of whom are disciples of mainstream American medicine. My friends who passed away, for varying periods after their aggressive treatment, spent their remaining months or years on earth, going in and out of hospitals, spending huge sums of money for the medical protocol foisted on them, without enjoying the quality of life that they could have had, had they not been total slaves of their medical specialists.

What is sad and disturbing about all this is that many of my departed friends trusted blindly on the treatment prescribed by the first doctors they approached. In other words, they did not seek a second or a third opinion from other medical specialists. Thrust into a world they knew nothing about, my friends immediately agreed to the protocol set up for them -- and the prescribed treatment was surgery.

I use the words sad and disturbing to accentuate the failure of the first doctors they approached, mostly surgeons, to suggest that a second or opinion be obtained, from specialists other than surgeons, such as oncologists and radiation therapists. Even sadder and more disturbing was their failure to ask the patients themselves to participate in the curing and healing process. "Surgery," the doctors said, and that was it.

When I met Inday Santiago, the noted leader of the women's movement, over breakfast at Marco Polo Hotel in Davao City several months ago, our talk shifted to cancer treatment. Inday told me that there is a very interesting and enlightening book, Choices in Healing, that cancer patients and their families should read. Inday kindly consented to get a copy of that book for me in the United States, where she was going, to attend a global conference on women's rights.

I have begun reading the 668-page book by Michael Lerner, as published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, and I cannot put it down. The insights and learned research work contained in the book can save many lives. With the cancer patient himself choosing the options in the healing of his sickness, and not allowing himself to be guided blindly by his doctors, he can win the battle against the Big C and enjoy the quality of life that he should have.

To help cancer patients, I will, from time to time, space permitting, be citing in Jaywalker many of the instructive things written in Choices of Healing. Hopefully, these pieces of information can guide cancer patients to choose the map that they should chart in the treatment of their life-threatening illness.

Now, as a starter, let me cite a portion of the Foreword in Choices in Healing, written by Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Medicine and Director, Stress Reduction Clinic, University of Massachusetts Medical Center, Worcester, Massachusetts:

A diagnosis of cancer can be so overwhelming, and our health care system so bewildering and impersonal, that one often doesn't know where to turn to or whom to trust. Many people, sensibly, want to know all their options, only to discover that cancer and its treatment, conventional and otherwise, is a universe in itself, and a rather intimidating one at that, especially for the cancer patient who has at most a layperson's knowledge of science and medicine. Cancer and cancer treatment has a history, a politics, a mainstream, a lunatic fringe. There are a multitude of choices and treatment decisions to be made even within the mainstream culture of medicine. Then there are other potentially valuable treatment avenues outside the mainstream. Some people will want to at least become informed about them and consider them in their decision-making process. Some are specific to cancer, others are adjunctive or palliative. Some support generalized health and healing. Each has potential risks and benefits which need to be weighed according to the specifics of the disease, one's life situation and personal values, the time frame involved, and of course, the latest research findings, which are usually incomplete and more suggestive than definitive. While medical and surgical oncology specialists know their own fields well and are in an excellent position to explain certain risks and benefits to their patients, they are frequently ignorant and sometimes scornful of other views or approaches, even if they are intended to be complementary or adjunctive to more mainstream approaches. So it is not unusual for the person with cancer and his or her family to wind up feeling isolated and on their own in trying to decide what to do.

How then to make sense of this universe of cancer for oneself, at least enough to make informed choices, decisions that might well affect the deepest aspects of one's life? Where to turn? What to do? What not to do? Whom to believe? What to ask? What is known? What is not known? How to decide? What to combine? What order to do things? What about the mind and inner well-being? What about nutritional approaches? Chinese medicine? Stress reduction? Yoga? What about my family? My fears? What about the meaning of all this in my life?

The first two chapters I have read are real blockbusters, insofar as knowing how to fight the Big C. I feel it a moral obligation to pass on the info, to as many cancer patients as possible, so that they will know how to cope, and not move on aimlessly, under the dominant spell of the so-called medical specialists. Watch succeeding columns of Jaywalker, for invaluable tips on how to become a cancer warrior.

Art A. Borjal's e-mail address: <[email protected]>