Radical Remission part 2: Taking Control of Your Health
The second key factor Dr. Turner discovered in researching the ‘spontaneous” remission cases in her New York Times Bestseller “Radical Remission” was a willingness to take control of your health. She broke this factor into 3 components:
- Taking an active versus passive role in your health
- Being willing to make changes in your life
- Being able to deal with resistance
Taking an Active Versus Passive Role in Your Health
When my father was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer from a routine chest x ray, beyond going to sleep 30 minutes earlier each night, he had no symptoms. He worked as an estate lawyer, golfed at least weekly, and enjoyed travel. His doctor told him that he had one year with treatment and 6-9 months without and he believed them. Dr. Turner writes in “Radical Remission” that the word “patient” comes from the Latin word “pati” which means both to suffer and to submit. If THAT isn’t the perfect description! My father willingly gave over control to doctors because he assumed that they knew what was best for him. His chemotherapy destroyed his quality of life…completely. His doctors knew, based on past experience, that stage IV meant conventional treatments couldn’t cure him. They also knew how much he would suffer. He wasn’t begging for treatments. I read a study that found that many oncologists, if they got a cancer diagnosis, would refuse treatment. If one of his doctors had said “you know Ky, I know this is a bum deal but if I were you I’d go enjoy life and not do treatments” I think he might have done that. I believe doctors want to help, but they are encased in a system heavily influenced (controlled) by pharmaceutical companies whose primary responsibility is to make money for shareholders. Pharmaceutical companies are publicly traded and are beholden to their shareholders to try to profit. Hello conflict of interest? At stage IV, doctors knew they couldn’t heal my father with drugs and they also knew that the standard of care treatment was really painful, yet 2 separate cancer centers recommended he do it even though he might only get 3 very unpleasant extra months out of it, and that’s exactly what happened. The cost of each chemo treatment was in the neighborhood of $10,000. Where is the humanity in this system?
I often wonder what would have happened if he had never had the routine chest x ray. I imagine he still would have passed sooner rather than later, but on his own terms, without nearly as much suffering. Could my father have healed naturally? Maybe. Many people do heal with stage IV diagnoses, but it would be speculation, particularly because my father was VERY stubborn and set in his ways. Giving up the cigars would have been very tough for him. Changing his mindset would have been even more so!
There were many events that he missed because he was too weak and sick with side effects from treatment to participate. At one point only 2 months into chemotherapy he told me he felt like he was dying. It was heartbreaking to me. Radiation on his brain several months later was just as awful, although in that case I think the steroids he was given to keep brain swelling down from radiation was the real source of suffering. The bottom line was that my father spent his last year of life suffering for absolutely no point. He died when the doctors told him he would, textbook nocebo effect.
My healing experience began just 9 days before my beloved father passed away. It was a lot to handle. I have been active in my health since the beginning of my healing experience. It was my natural response. I started researching alternatives right away because conventional oncology had no answers for me and because I had just witnessed my father’s terrible suffering from chemotherapy and radiation. Why would anyone of sound mind ever continue to believe so much in a system that was saying they couldn’t cure you to the point that they thought alternatives were quackery? I figured I had nothing to lose by being open-minded. So I charted a different course. I do believe that we can over-research and spend too much time focused on a condition we are trying to shift. I did this. I spent too much time researching. This time I am letting God do much more of the heavy lifting and waiting for Divine insight while enjoying life. Live and learn I guess…
Now, I feel I have a much more balanced approach. I research some, pray and talk to the Divine a lot, play and enjoy life and only do what FEELS right. I remind myself that God always has the perfect plan, I just need to surrender it all and be observant to the trail of breadcrumbs. That can be tricky because our thoughts, especially when confronted with a scary-sounding diagnosis (and a medical system that always wants to remind you that you are unwell) can throw us on the hamster wheel to inner hell. There was a time when I thought more was better. I kept adding this supplement, or that therapy always seeking healing, always focused in fear (albeit under the surface) and doing things out of desperation. I was stuck in fight or flight mode just like most cancer patients. It is very hard to escape fight or flight, especially when you work within the conventional oncology framework. Just walking into Dana Farber makes me depressed. The more seasoned patients look like hell warmed over…mainly from treatments not the disease. Every time I must be in that environment I have to shore myself up mentally and emotionally. How in God’s name is that supportive to healing?
A friend who had a disease experience wrote to me in the hospital and reminded me that I told her at the time to “trust her soul”. Damn if that wasn’t a good piece of advice circling back around to me! Now, especially since the transformative experience around the surgery, I relax, listen to the clues from my body and envision myself as a two-sided scale, gently adding and removing products and ideas to keep my scale balanced (body and mind). I am always the CEO of me. Is it scary to be in charge? Heck yeah. I would much rather hand over control to some doctor or guru to solve my challenges. In a way I do, because I hand it over to God. I ask to be shown much more than endlessly researching, but I still think of it as taking an active role, just on less travelled terrain. I lack trust in the conventional system because greed and bureaucracy has corrupted so much of it and because the system is fueled by fear. Case in point, at my last oncology appointment my doctor was reviewing options. My husband and I both noticed that she only told us about options available at Dana Farber. Specifically we were asking about immunotherapy. Cancer patients are usually left on their own to discover treatment options at other facilities. Profits before patients is a theme I have observed often. Even if you think the conventional oncology model is the best option, how does it serve patients to have to seek out their own options? That’s just utterly overwhelming. Six years ago I researched an immunotherapy option in trial at the University of Pittsburgh medical center. My highly respected oncologist at Dana Farber did not even know it existed. I HAD TO TELL HIM. The system is so incomplete. That would be fine, except oncologists, in my experience, do not tell patients that different options exist at other centers and come across often to patients with a sense of urgency and downright bullying to get started on their plan. I believe they should have an ethical obligation to share other choices, even if it steers patients to other facilities. Maybe I am Pollyanna on this one, but how can we all just accept this current system?
Be Willing to Make Changes in Your Life
This one was harder for me…much, much harder. I did some good early work. I made changes to my diet, although if you read part 1 of this blog series you would notice that I cheated a lot. I also made changes in my thought process, but as I mentioned above, my research-junkie tendencies fed my fears, not my grace. Now I feel very committed to giving my body the right fuel to thrive, but more than that I am actively enjoying learning about myself at the deepest levels, levels many of us refuse to go. I am seeing my true nature more and more. When we see our true nature, realizing that we spend a large amount of time satisfying others’ needs and our ego’s need to feel loved by others, we realize how unfaithful we have been to ourselves. This isn’t just cancer patients. This is almost everybody. We ALL wear masks, well maybe there are like 5% of the people you know who project their true nature in social settings, but most of us are Stepford Wifing it at least some of the time, you know putting your best face forward, not the robot part. It’s an interesting place, to be willing to go within and learn who you are. It’s also very freeing. I haven’t felt this peaceful in…well…ever really! One healer that Dr. Turner interviewed for the book was Bryan McMahon, a practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine who said that the “the inclusion of some type of insight practice into your own state is absolutely essential for people who are facing any type of illness. Because it’s only through this tangible feeling and understanding of what is the actual state that you are in, energetically and physically, that people can begin to say “wow, I really have ignored my life for so long. I really have been trying to do too much. I really have been too controlling.” It’s only through that type of practice that people can begin to do the internal maintenance that’s required to really bring about permanent change in the dynamics of their chi mechanisms (life force energy). Instead of (the chi) going completely out and up, we start to see the energy return, start to come back in to where it needs to be.”
The interesting thing is that I see what Bryan McMahon is talking about all the time in people who have experienced cancer and gone into remission, however they got there. These are the people that quit the life-sucking job, get the pet they have always wanted, start the family they always put off and generally reconnect with what brings them joy. It’s so wonderful to see and a huge part of true healing!
Being Able to Deal With Resistance
I am grateful for the support I have received from family and friends. I am lucky that I did not experience too much backlash for my ‘road less travelled’ approach. The truth is that most friends, family and especially doctors want you to accept ‘reality’ and submit to the standard protocol. My doctors have definitely not embraced my independent perspective. Dr. Turner shares in “Radical Remission” that her first-hand experience in oncology confirms that there are “good” patients and “annoying” patients. The “good” ones follow doctors’ orders, usually without questions that challenge any part of the protocol. The “annoying” ones question doctors and/or refuse to submit. I chose to be labelled ‘annoying’ rather than submit to a system with huge, GAPING, flaws in it. I was a thorn in my oncologist’s side from the start, albeit a polite, smiling one. Does that mean I have turned my back on the conventional system completely? No. The western medical model excels at urgent and trauma care. I am eternally grateful for the excellent care I received around my surgery. I am grateful for emergency rooms in the case of accidents. I am grateful for quick treatment of strokes and heart attacks. I am grateful for many aspects of our modern medical care, but I think conventional medicine is utterly clueless in healing disease, because disease is far more than symptoms and usually cannot be cured by drugs. Drugs may help to contain an issue, but often with very difficult side effects. Just this week CNN reported that the Mediterranean diet was more effective than statin drugs at preventing death in people with heart disease, without the nasty side effects that statin users often experience. Symptoms are messages letting you know there is an imbalance. Silencing the message usually doesn’t fix the imbalance. I believe disease must be addressed from a body, mind, and soul approach and there is no pharmaceutical drug for that.
Somehow those of us who hear a different call must come to terms with being labelled quacks and ridiculed by traditional oncologists and by friends and family who only believe in the western model of healthcare. It’s not that we go out seeking this state. I had JUST watched my beloved father pass away exactly one year after he was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. He was the “good” patient, meaning he complied with his oncologist’s orders. Following his oncologist’s advice made his last year miserable. His oncologist also profited handsomely from my father’s treatments. Did you know that oncologists often buy chemotherapy drugs and resell them to patients at a premium? How likely is it that those same doctors will research or suggest mind work or changing a diet when there is no profit in it? Seems like a conflict of interest to me. Beyond that, oncologists learn only what medical schools have taught them and pharmaceutical companies have powerful influence there as well. Often I have found, through direct conversations, that medical doctors have very little training and, therefore, no real authority to suggest a supportive diet to healing. Nutrition is barely covered in medical school. Spending an overnight in a world class hospital confirmed for me that conventional medicine is nowhere when it comes to nutrition. Hospital food is ridiculously unhealthy in most cases.
Taking control of my own health has been something that came naturally to me since 2010. Being willing to change, really change deeply, is what I resisted. I did do some changing for sure, but now I am going really deep. I am ready to transform body and mind in whatever way the Divine leads me. I am very grateful for the opportunity to go so deeply within to truly know myself (shadows and all) more completely. I encourage everyone reading this, with a diagnosis or not, to take the time to be quiet with yourself and really feel what is true for you, as much as possible every day, especially at decision points. I have found that my body and mind gives me clues all day long. In the past, I may have ignored them, but now I really try to pay attention, heed the messages and transform the parts of me ready to soar. You don’t have to experience something that radically shakes up your world to do this. Get to know the real you, the one you are when you are alone, with absolutely no one to impress. Let her come out to play in the sunshine every day of your life and you will never feel lonely again.