I’ve been observing the avalanche of publicity about Elizabeth Edwards, wife of the presidential candidate, and her breast cancer, and have been struck by the mixture of emotions I feel. Like most people, I’m tremendously impressed by her courage in discussing the disease so candidly.
I’m even more impressed by her willingness to discuss the taboo subject of death so openly. She’s spoken about “that unknown number of days each of us has.”
Sometimes her openness is disarming to the media hordes, many of them struggling to maintain pained expressions as they speak about Elizabeth, and wanting only that the subject of death hang out there, tantalizingly, teasingly.
At one point in last Sunday’s 60 Minutes interview with the Edwards, Katie Couric observes dramatically to Elizabeth, “Here you’re staring at possible death…” as if the most unspeakable is occurring. And Elizabeth responds, “Aren’t we all, though?”
Katie can’t take the bait, of course—to discuss further Elizabeth’s views on death—and simply ignores the question, inquiring further about Elizabeth’s mindset as affects her husband.
All of which leads me to another question that doesn’t seem to have been raised even peripherally: what sorts of alternative treatments are possible options in cases of metastatic breast cancer (and other terminal cancers)? I heard Elizabeth say in an interview yesterday something to the effect that she has faith that her doctor is looking out for her interests and thus she will be looking to this doctor for the right protocol to follow.
The media treat her situation as if the only experts are the oncologists and other conventionally-trained medical specialists of the world. There is another approach, though.
I know a woman now in her late 50s who has had metastatic breast cancer for nearly 15 years. She and her husband, who is an acupuncturist, took the approach early on that she would explore and select alternative treatments for as long as possible, with the intention of forestalling conventional chemotherapy and the side effects and time-limited effectiveness it entails.
She has been to Germany and Mexico for treatments not allowed in the U.S. She has traveled around the U.S. for specialized treatments by holistic physicians.
Most significant, she has gone on living a reasonably full life while all the other women in a support group she joined many years ago have died.
Her cancer returned last year, and she has begun receiving conventional chemotherapy, but in a very deliberate protocol designed to keep it as weak as possible so as to hopefully gain significant effectiveness before fully opening the spigot.
I’m not trying to suggest that Elizabeth Edwards, or any other woman with breast cancer, should follow this woman’s path. I am pointing to this woman’s example as illustrative of an individual researching ALL the options and then taking charge of her medical care, rather than leaving it to a conventionally-trained physician to decide for her. In terms of the public discussion, this subject appears to line up somehwere behind the subject of death.
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