While
you almost certainly need a good oncologist to prescribe and monitor
your medical treatment, there is often much more to surviving cancer
Cancer
Care 101: Treating the Illness, Treating the Person
by Dr. Martin L. Rossman
In cancer care there are two
complementary goals of treatment. One, the usual medical goal, is to
kill cancer cells and tumors, or reduce their numbers and their ability
to grow, reproduce, and spread (metastasize). The other, perhaps best
called the healing goal, is to support the well-being and resistance of
the patient. Here I use resistance to stand for all the mechanisms,
known and unknown, that protect us from the development and
dissemination of cancer.
Conventional medical care for cancer has
for many years concentrated on destroying tumors without paying much
attention to supporting the patient as a whole person, with innate
healing capacities. Until recently, most people put themselves in the
hands of an oncologist (cancer specialist) and did what they were told.
While you almost certainly need a good oncologist to prescribe and
monitor your medical treatment, there is often much more to surviving
cancer. Charles Smith, M.D., is a prominent urologist who specialized
for years in treating men with prostate cancer, and then developed
aggressive prostate cancer himself. After going through treatment, he
wrote:
"Cancer is not just a lump in your body
that can be cut out or killed by radiation or drugs. It alters every
aspect of your life. Time and time again patients would tell me this.
Some would even say that, in the end, it was the best thing that ever
happened to them. Statements like this make no sense to a physician who
is solely focused on the details of surgery, radiation therapy, or
ablation. I have come to the conclusion that you, as a patient, cannot
simply allow the management of your cancer and your life to be limited
by the narrow views of the physicians you encounter."
Dr. Smith points to a major problem with
the conventional approach to cancer. While it aggressively attempts to
eliminate cancer cells, it does little or nothing to promote the
health, vitality, and well-being of the person who is fighting that
cancer. A poorly nourished, poorly supported person with cancer,
overwhelmed by emotions, is likely to have a much more difficult time
than one who is better nourished, better supported, and better balanced
emotionally.
Years ago I moved into a new house with
my wife and infant daughter. Next to the back windows around the baby's
room there were a number of ailing bushes. Not being much of a
gardener, I called one in. A leather-skinned fellow looking twice his
actual age said that the bushes had four different infestations and
needed to be sprayed with four different chemical pesticides. When I
asked him if they were toxic, he lit up a cigarette and looked at me as
if I was from Mars. "Nah," he said, drawing deeply on his smoke, "I've
been using them for years and they haven't bothered me none."
Having a small child, I got a second
opinion from an organic gardener, a pleasant young man who carefully
examined the plants and their environment. He agreed completely with
the diagnoses made by the first gardener, but his approach to treating
them was quite different. He said, "These plants are pretty sick, but
they haven't been well cared for in some time. Let's give them what
they need and see what they can do on their own." He then showed me how
to prune the deadwood, aerate the soil, fertilize the plants, and get
them on a regular watering schedule. In four months the bushes had
regained their health and thrown off the infections themselves. The
next year, they even produced beautiful blossoms.
The difference between the approaches of
these two gardeners is a perfect analogy for a strictly medical versus
an integrated approach to cancer care. The plants may still have needed
pesticides if they weren't able to recover themselves, but they would
probably have needed smaller doses and fewer than the first gardener
recommended. In the same way, you may well benefit from medical and
surgical treatment, but you are likely to do much better with all
therapies if your basic needs are attended to as well.
Supporting your innate healing abilities
can only help you make the best use of any treatment you choose, and,
alternatively, neglecting them is likely to make it more difficult for
any treatment to work. As the second gardener said to me, "You know, if
these plants don't get regular water and proper nutrients, all the
pesticides in the world won't be able to cure them.
Supporting your health and eliminating
your disease are two complementary approaches to healing that support
and strengthen each other. In my experience, neither one works as well
as both together.
You can use this analogy to see if there
are any changes in your life that would support your own healing more
effectively. Is there "dead-wood" in your life -- areas where you put
energy that does not produce something of value to your well-being? Can
you eliminate any of it? Are there pests and parasites that can be
picked off? Are you giving yourself good nutrition and enough water on
a regular basis? Is there an appropriate balance of light (joy) and
shade (rest) for you? What could you do to make that balance more
enjoyable for yourself?
Supporting your health makes it easier to
tolerate treatments that can sometimes be difficult, and that in turn
increases the likelihood that the treatments will work as desired.
Methods of supporting your health and enhancing resistance to cancer
generally fall into three categories: (1) nutritional support, ranging
from improvement of diet to sophisticated individualized programs of
nutritional supplementation with vitamins, minerals, herbs, essential
fatty acids, and natural biological response modifiers; (2) mind-body
approaches, ranging from support groups to counseling, to meditation,
stress reduction, and guided imagery practices, and body-mind practices
such as yoga, chi gung, tai chi, Jin Shin Jyutsu; and (3)
systematic approaches with time-honored healing systems, such as
traditional Chinese medicine or Ayurvedic medicine.
While the methods differ, their goal is
the same -- supporting and stimulating the vitality and function of the
innate healing systems of the body, mind, and spirit. This idea is an
ancient one, which perhaps we lost sight of in our enthusiasm for what
modem medical treatment might be able to do. In traditional Chinese
medicine this is known as fu zheng therapy. Fu zbeng
translates as "supporting the righteous." In China, fu zheng is
not the sole therapy for cancer, but it is a useful complement to both
traditional and modem means to eliminate tumors and cancer cells. Many
studies have shown that good nutrition, herbs, acupuncture, and
mind-body approaches are all effective in reducing adverse effects from
conventional treatments, and very likely in improving treatment results.
Guided imagery has become quickly and
widely accepted as a useful adjunct in the treatment of people with
cancer due largely to its ease of use, low cost, and rapid
psychological benefits. It has been shown to increase both the numbers
and aggressiveness of natural killer cells when practiced over time,
has been shown to reduce complications from surgery, relieve pain, and
reduce adverse effects of chemotherapy. Imagery is a psychological and
medical intervention likely to increase your odds of recovery.
Copyright © 2003 Martin L. Rossman, M.D.
Excerpted from
Fighting Cancer from Within: How to Use the Power of Your
Mind For Healing By Martin L. Rossman, M.D. (Published by
Owl Books; $15.00US/$21.95CAN; 0-8050-6916-X).
Martin L. Rossman, M.D., is the
cofounder and president of the Academy for Guided Imagery and is on the
faculty of the medical school at the University of California, San
Francisco. The author of Guided Imagery for Self-Healing and Fighting
Cancer from Within: How to Use the Power of Your Mind For Healing, he
lives in Mill Valley, California. For more information, please visit: www.fightcancerwithin.com.
Knowing the proper procedures in the
treatment of cancer is essential to beating the disease. There is
most certainly a medical side to treating a disease and a well-being
and healing personal side. A good way to start is knowing the various stages
of cancer and what can be done by both aspects in the fight. Beating
cancer is a fight anyone can win and it takes maximum effort from
all sides.
