August 16, 2004
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Grace and Grit – by Ken Wilber (cont.)
When Ken and Treya Wilber began to deal with her diagnosis of cancer they discovered the difference between illness and sickness and how society reacts. To quote KW: The National Cancer Association claims in its national advertising that “half of all cancers are now curable.” Fact: In the last 40 years there has been no significant increase whatsoever in the average survival rates of cancer patients–despite the much vaunted “war on cancer” and the introduction of more sophisticated radiation techniques, chemotherapies, and surgeries. The one happy exception is the blood cancers–Hodgkin’s and leukemia–which respond well to chemotherapy. The pathetic 2% or so increase in survival rates for the remaining cancers are due almost entirely to early detection, the rest of the cancer rates have not budged an inch, literally.) And as for breast cancer, the survival rates have actually gone down! Treya Wilber’s doctor told her: It’s as if, when a cancer cell enters your body, it has a date written on it (that is, the date you will die). We can sometimes extend the disease-free interval, but we can’t change that date. KW continues: So what’s a typical doctor to do? Since he can’t really control the illness, he attempts to control the sickness….by prescribing a certain way that the patient should think about the cancer, namely that the disease is an entity that the doctor understands and that the doctor can medically treat, and that other approaches are useless or even harmful. In practice, this means that the doctor will sometimes prescribe chemotherapy even when he knows it won’t work.
Pretty inflammatory ideas, eh? Tune in next week for more of Ken and Treya’s journey. And bear in mind that the book was published in 1993 and that their fight against her cancer began in 1983.
Deep Thought: When I was seven, I told my friend Timmy Barker I would give him a million dollars if he would eat an earthworm. He ate the worm, but I never gave him the million dollars. As of last week, all I had given him was $9,840.
Today I am grateful for: 10-15 degrees cooler weather
End of Day – 9:18 pm
+ = Got some encouragement from one of the doctors I work with to see if I can get the root canal appointment(s) moved up sooner. Will try tomorrow.
- = Hideously humid stick-to-your-clothes weather today.
Comments (5)
So sad that all these facts are true. Sometimes they hope to shrink the tumor to give the pt a little more time or a little less pain. According to my professor of pathophysiology, the new research is on prevention, all those things you hear about antioxidants, avoiding stress, sunburns, noxious chemicals. I am anxious to hear more about this book.
interesting ideas…
Isn’t that just awful? I’ve lost a few family members to cancer over the years. I sucked on an earthworm on a dare once when I was five, but I never ate it! Did you really give Timmy 98 hundred bucks? Lucky Timmy! LOL. The heat is rising again here in Houston. Our cool spell didn’t last long at all. I’m waiting for October. Best month of the year done here, in my view.
the unbudging cancer rates, that really is depressing…
scary distinctions to deal with. stay cool and take care.