Upcoming
Memoir
Introduction to my upcoming memoir
Dear reader,
I am not a physician, oncologist, scientist, or therapist. I am a layperson, one of the approximately 20 million people worldwide who was diagnosed with cancer in 2022. That diagnosis, coupled with my oncologist’s poorly-presented prognosis, prompted me to aggressively pursue reputable anticancer information. I am now passionate about sharing what I’ve learned with other cancer survivors. I recently had a conversation with a neighbor whose friend had been diagnosed with cancer. I rambled on telling her things that I thought were important for her friend to know. But afterward, I got to thinking, if I had been talking directly with her friend, what are the main points I would want her to know? If I were speaking to a group of people about my journey, what are the main topics I would want to share? I made a list of those points and will expand upon the details in later chapters as I share my story. But if you read nothing else, here’s what I’d want to sit down and share with you:
1. Take your fear to God. This is not a surprise to him and he knows the outcome. Psalm 139:16 tells us, “Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” He can handle any emotions and questions you can throw at him. But most importantly, focus on God rather than your illness. Stop telling God how big your mountain is and tell your mountain how big your God is! He is Jehovah Rapha, your healer. “Nothing is impossible with God” (Luke 1:37).
2. Choose your oncologist wisely. I love Chris Wark’s list of 20 questions to ask your oncologist. If I had asked my first oncologist some of those questions, I might have approached treatment differently. Bottom line here, find out if your oncologist thinks you can get well and stay well. If not, find a new oncologist! You want someone who is standing in your corner rooting for you to get well, not someone who just expects you to die when the statistics predict. If you can find an integrative oncologist who can also recommend lifestyle changes, that would be ideal.
3. Research your treatment options. Don’t blindly trust your oncologist or just hope that their recommended therapy will cure you. Many conventional treatments are simply palliative (designed to treat the symptoms and improve the quality of life), rather than curative (designed to eliminate the disease entirely). My first conventional oncologist wasn’t concerned about treatment side effects or the possible formation of a secondary cancer while chemotherapy suppressed my immune system. I believe her recommended treatment was palliative, not curative. You want an oncologist that seeks to cure your cancer and make your entire body healthy. The tools in the conventional medicine toolbox to treat cancer usually include surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, and drugs. Each comes with its intended effects and its normal undesired side effects that may affect you for months or years to come. And even though every case of cancer is different because there are many types of cancer, various genetic mutations, and every person’s body responds differently, oncologists use the same tools and treatments to treat every case, leading to diverse outcomes. Determine what treatment options, conventional and alternative, are the best methods to achieve your desired outcome.
4. Understand the difference between treating the symptoms and the cause and do everything you can to make your body healthy. Conventional medicine treats the physical symptom of cancer growth. Your conventional oncologist will likely tell you that there’s no way to know the cause of your cancer. But if you review your diet and lifestyle, you may discover some likely culprits. Is it worth it to change everything you can to ensure that your body is healthy and inhospitable to cancer growth? There are MANY science-based lifestyle medicine options available that you might choose to implement with conventional methods or instead of conventional methods. First and foremost, I recommend reviewing your diet. Removing meat, dairy, fish, eggs, and sugar from your diet can be helpful in making your body healthy. Fasting and sleeping at least eight hours in a dark room nightly also have proven benefits. And whether you choose conventional treatment or not, boosting the health of your immune system helps your body heal itself and prevent cancer growth. Meditation and exercise are both recommended for whole body health and cancer treatment. Many of the lifestyle changes that my husband and I made are beneficial to whole body health; there’s an astonishing list of scientifically-proven health effects that we won’t see because we now only eat plants: heart disease, strokes, type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, diverticulosis, hypertension, other forms of cancer, kidney disease, osteoporosis, dementia, obesity, and more. Throughout this book I’ll share some of the lifestyle changes that I’ve made and some of my favorite resources that gave me hope and pointed me in the right direction. I advocate that lifestyle changes are permanent; some survivors who either don’t make lifestyle modifications or later abandon their healthy choices, have a cancer recurrence.
5. Never, ever give up your hope. I let my first oncologist and her team steal my hope. Learn from my mistake and don’t let anyone take your hope. God restored my hope by reminding me to focus on Him and by sending actionable steps that I could take to make my body inhospitable to cancer. That’s what got me through treatment and keeps me going afterward. Your oncologist doesn’t have a crystal ball, only statistics. Maybe you’ll be an outlier on the bell curve of life expectancy after diagnosis! If you follow #4 and do everything you can to improve your health, it can only improve your prognosis. God alone knows the outcome of your illness. Refer back to #1: Get your hope from the God of the impossible, not from your oncologist.