Yesterday we were eating breakfast, getting ready to leave for my next chemo, when the oncologist’s office called to say they’d just gotten Monday’s blood test results, and my counts were too low. I have to postpone for at least a week. I can’t tell you how disappointed I/we were. I had the magical date, June 4, when I’d be finished, and now it’s June 11, barring other delays.
Maybe the fact that we ate out Saturday night and I got what was probably food poisoning and spent the night with vomiting and diarrhea lowered my counts. Or maybe because my counts were low, I had less tolerance for food bacteria. Who knows? I’m trying to cheer myself up by noting that I have another week of feeling well before the next round.
This is such a long haul. Six months. If I’d chosen a clinical trial, I’d be about done now: one arm of the trial was 6 chemos, no radiation. The other was 5 weeks of daily radiation with 4 chemos. The idea was to find out if radiation is necessary at all. (Since that study began, evidence has been mounting that, yes indeed, radiation improves the odds.)
My oncologist is on the Board of that huge national study. However, he put no pressure on me, and I chose his standard treatment, instead—3 chemos, 5 weeks’ daily radiation followed by 3 weekly internal radiation, then 3 more chemos. The full blast. Stage C3-2 metastasized cancer’s nothing to gamble with.
A friend who relies a great deal on alternative medicine asked me why I went, seemingly unquestioningly, with what I was told, rather than investigate other therapies. I look at it this way. If I’d just been told I have blockages in three out of four of my heart arteries and the fourth didn’t look so good, either, I wouldn’t start a diet and exercise routine to cure it. Too late for that. Move fast, hit hard. If I’d known years ago I was on the verge of cancer, I would’ve tried every food and exercise routine that seemed plausible. Also, if I’d been told I was hopeless, I’d go for the best alternative plan I could find.
As it is, I’m seeing a chiropractor whose treatments are statistically unproven. He says it’ll boost the immune system, I feel better, breathe more deeply, and it can’t hurt. When I started mediating over 25 years ago, the practice was suspicious to the mainstream. Now that we can watch brainwaves in action, doctors as well as popular magazines recommend it.
Maybe if I had a lesser cancer. But no, I think I’d follow my oncologist’s advice even then. I agree that the drug companies influence treatment. They support studies that are likely biased in their direction. On the other hand, if some non-corporate lone wolf came up with an alternative treatment that worked over and over (not once, not twice, but statistically significantly), I’m convinced there’d be droves of scientists and doctors dying to make a name for themselves by running the studies, with control groups, and writing the articles. Even the drug companies would find a way to make money from it.
I’m not willing to rely on anecdotal evidence. Cancers are as different as people. Sometimes people heal spontaneously. That does happen. I’ve no doubt some foods have cured some people. And that healing rituals have cured some people. Who knows what mysterious things go on in the body? I’m deeply grateful for the many prayers offered for my recovery. I feel buoyed and supported, healed in some way, by them. I’m drinking lots of green tea, eating well, and getting as much exercise as I can. When the treatments are over, I’ll keep that up.
When the treatments are over. . . . now that I’m nearing the end—oh well, less near than I thought—the fear rises in me a bit more. As long as I’m having chemo, something’s being done. That feels a bit secure. Then what? Will all the cancer be dead? Will the same conditions that caused it cause it again? No one knows. But frankly, no one knows anything much. We’re the product of so many causes and conditions we can’t begin to know them all. 
It seems all we can do is rely on what seems most reliable.
I do what I can. I stay as responsive as I can to the shifting needs of the moment. I trust the help of those who seem trustworthy. This is my life, right now. The sun’s shining and it’s finally warming up again. Our tulips are blooming. I’m going to take a walk.