About three books which I have found most useful
in my own cancer treatment.
First, a bit of a summary or who and where I am on the cancer ladder: In late May of 2011 I was diagnosed with Stage Four colon cancer, already metastatic to the liver. I was assigned to palliative care procedures intended to make me more comfortable and easier to treat at my HMO. prior to a death predicted to be not far in the future.
But as frightening as all of this was, I had a number of lucky breaks.
First and foremost, I had great insurance. Both my wife and I were educators–both since retired to cope with my illness at the end of long careers–and had double-covered our insurance without giving the whole thing much thought.
Secondly, I was in great shape, not only for my age–69–but when compared to my peers in age and occupation. Certainly I was in the top 10% of such a group. I had studied, practiced, and coached martial arts since 1962, with a few breaks of one or two years as my academic career as an Sinologist got very busy, in Taiwan, China, and Vietnam, and for more than eight years with the marvelous instructor Al Dacascos in Beaverton, Oregon.
I also had been a regular bicyclist, often commuting more than 50 miles a week to work—sometimes 35 miles per day— and had ridden four Cycle Oregon rides of 500 miles each, over a week. The week I was diagnosed I was practicing Chinese Jian ( Taiji straight sword) for three-five hours per week, and biking perhaps 25 miles a week.
On the other hand, I had a very poor diet. All the exercise let me keep my weight within bounds no matter what I ate, though I always felt a bit heavy. I ate, I now know, way too much beef, to many carbs, and way too few fruits and vegetables. My wife and I bought a quarter of a grass-fed beef each year and felt that we were really taking care of ourselves by doing so. But I was basically on the give-me-cancer diet.
At the time I was diagnosed, I understood that I certainly had less than a year to live. I learned that the odds were that of those of all ages and physical conditions with my diagnosis, 3-4 individuals would be alive in five years. Those were of course, daunting odds and I resolved to “die strong.”
But again I had some lucky breaks. A very creative surgeon discovered that my colon was unusually long, thus giving him a chance to get “good margins,” that is, to take out much apparently healthy tissue beyond the tumor in the upper colon. It was also found that the liver tumors were tightly grouped and all in one lobe of the liver, which was subsequently removed. So after 5-6 operations, and two 8 infusion cycles of chemotherapy, I enjoyed a blessed remission of six months, from July to December of 2o13.
Then, in December of 2013, another tumor was removed from the incision of the liver operation, presumed to be a “dropped cell,” a tumor sprouting from tissue perhaps resulting from the liver bisection. This turned out not to be the case. In February my liver more or less collapsed and a stint was placed, then several months later (late May 2014) a group of tumors were found all up and down the incisions of all the previous operations, not counting the colon resection, but including on the liver itself.
I am now, as of this writing in mid-July of 2014, accounted as a “salvage case,” and again I am presumed to have perhaps six months to live, unless unusual measures are successful or my renewed chemotherapy cycle is very effective, buying me some more time to perhaps try other things or the new protocols that seem to the hopeful patient to be surfacing regularly.
As a result of all of these events, I have learned a great deal. I feel very fortunate to have survived this long–of the group diagnosed at about the same time I was, statistically probably fewer than 25% of them are alive, and of those, most are probably somewhat younger than am I.
There have been many blessings along the way as I dealt with cancer, but these are probably less of interest to other patients or care-givers than what I have learned that might have been useful to me earlier, and perhaps to you now.
Let me turn now to some books that I found very valuable. Some I found on my own, others were recommended by my oncologist, a man very attuned to my own interests in Asian medicine and spirituality in general. I would consider these three books perhaps critical ones in that they are all written by experts in their particular fields and cite a great many studies, indicating a very broad familiarity with the science of cancer. At the same time, they are all easily accessible and do not presume a scientific background.
First was Siddhartha Mukherjee’s work, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer. This work won the Pulitzer prize for non-fiction in 2011. See a description at: http://www.pulitzer.org/works/2011-General-Nonfiction This book was challenging as the author did not stint on the scientific details, but the writing was extremely clear. It was an exciting book which may seem odd, given the gravity of the topic. But if I were searching for an oncologist I would be somewhat alarmed if a particular candidate did not seem at least familiar with the book’s importance. And as it was published in 2011, he or she has now had three years to read it. If they are too busy to read what is arguably the most important book in their field in at least the last decade, I think I would keep searching.
From this book you can learn the history of cancer treatments, and gain a good understanding of our current knowledge of many different types of cancer, and of recent research, particularly on the DNA and molecular side of things, itself an important topic, particularly to those of us facing prolonged chemotherapy and trying to understand why some treatments work for a while and then suddenly and tragically, cease to do so.
There are now plenty of used copies of this book, and all others referenced here, available at Amazon, of course.
Of the other two books I would suggest, David Servan-Schreiber’s Anticancer: A New Way of Life would be useful even to those who do not have cancer. The author’s perspective is that we all carry the seeds of cancer in our bodies, and these are set into growth by various factors, many of which can largely, even easily, be avoided.
But even after cancer develops, the book is a very useful one. Servan-Schreiber was a very highly regarded brain surgeon when he was diagnosed with what was assumed to be a terminal cancer. It eventually killed him, but he survived for 15 years after that initial diagnosis and continued to work and lived a very full and pleasurable life right up to the end.
The book is valuable for its content and it is easy to read; the authorial voice is a very personable and accessible one. Given his position in his profession, Servan-Schreiber had access to the most expert physicians and to promising on-going studies as well as a very good grasp of the past state of the field. The book is particularly effective not only in how best to prevent cancer but also how to buy more time, even to reverse advanced cancer.
The book is also strong on science, but in general a very different approach than that of Mukherjee. Servan-Screiber gives a reader insights into why what look like very promising protocols and treatment modalities rarely break through into the day-to-day world of cancer care. Basically, cancer drugs or treatments which cannot be patented are of little interest to Big Pharm, which is willing to invest billions in new treatments promising immense returns, no matter how dangerous or ineffective they may be, providing they can get them onto the open market.
In my own treatment, at one point I was given a new–to me–drug which had been used in the treatment of breast cancer for many years. It hit me very hard and was extremely wearying; just the one treatment knocked me flat. The day after I first—and last took it—I read the breaking news that the FDA had finally, after many years, noticed that it apparently did not help at all in breast cancer treatment. Hundreds of thousand of women, if not millions, had undoubtedly suffered for cycle after cycle of this drug, for years, at potentially great expense and to no known benefit.
If you are currently a patient of a care-giver, you are probably given a very thorough print-out of your treatment, the drugs, and they most common side effects. READ THEM and do your own additional research. Both Servan-Schreiber and Kelly Turner, the author of the last book treated here, have story after story of patients who took over their own care to immense benefit. At the very least you must be a partner with your physicians.
And no matter who you are, don’t be shy. Cancer is your life, and potentially your death. If your doctor shrugs off your questions, get a new one. I have been with my HMO for more than forty years and have learned to work within it. My first step is to hang around the nurses’ station and ask: “If you or your husband (or wife) had this condition, who would be your first choice of the physicians here?” This works better before you are assigned a physician of course, so hit the ground running…
At the same time, it is reasonable to expect that many of your questions are ultimately unanswerable. My own oncologist sees medicine as much as art as science, and has more than once answered one of my questions with an honest “I don’t know, this ain’t rocket science.”
One of the many things we have found very useful has been for Christine, as caregiver, to sit in on as many treatments and discussions as possible, though she is extremely medically phobic. She is able to sit back a bit from the communications process to pick out the important issues. As well, she has kept a diary over the three-year period I have been in treatment and I have kept a full copy of all print-outs and reports, as well as every receipt for every penny spent. These have repeatedly proven useful.
I have also learned that it is ultimately MY responsibility to make sure that all the different units who treat me, GP, Oncologist, Imaging, and Coagulation Center, are actually in communication. This became very critical when HMO One referred me to a regionally known cancer research hospital for the liver resection. I was on the phone constantly and got a card or at least a phone number from every unit with which I had contact. I repeatedly found that the two units were not communicating with each other, much complicating my scheduling, etc. I frequently felt badly at adding to the nurse or case manager’s daily burden, but you definitely want to be sure that the left hand knows what the right hand is doing, particularly when both of them are in your liver.
As much as I enjoyed Mukherjee’s sweeping treatment, I found Servan-Schreiber’s work more pertinent to my own problems. He is very much a scientist and cites sources and compares treatments, and there are enough charts and graphs for any reader, but also the author was a patient for fifteen years and had an immediate concern with cancer research and treatment. His frustration, sometimes outright anger with many oncologists who refuse to be open to any treatment modalities other than the classic wonder drug approach, was reassuring. He also however, very much emphasizes the importance of you being in charge of your treatment.
The third book, Kelly A. Turner’s Radical Remission, The nine Key Factors that Can Make a Real Difference. Surviving Cancer Against All Odds, will perhaps be of most interest to those in the end-game of treatment, what I think of as the “Hail Mary” pass to win the game or at least lose it while fighting passionately for that last inch to the goal.
Turner, though less credentialed than the other two authors, also commands great respect; the book was recommended to me by my oncologist. While working as a psychological counselor in oncology, Turner encountered a case of complete remission in a patient who was presumed to be on the verge of death. When she asked the treating physician about this, he shrugged it off as an anomaly, one of those things that sometimes happen. He suggested it might make a good topic for her Ph.D. dissertation to look into such cases. She soon located more than 1800 cases of radical remissions in many different countries.
Turner created an immense data base from repeated interviews and questionnaires filled out by those cases, and attributed the apparent similarities in their successful outcomes to nine common factors. Many of these will be familiar to the reader of either of the first two books, but Turner draws on the stories of real people living in widely different cultures to analyze those factors. Kelly’s page can be found at: www.drkellyturner. I was initially somewhat put off by her sometimes chatty and cheer-leading entrepreneurial style, but probably many might prefer that to the sometimes heavy going of the first two books.
I found it interesting that Turner found spiritual and emotional issues to be very important. She certainly emphasizes diet and exercise as do the other two authors, but discusses many other factors that might not occur to all of us.
To sum up, I found the first book, Siddhartha Mukherjee’s work, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, very useful as background to my condition and treatment as well as a sweeping introduction to current on-going research and consequent understanding of the condition.
The second, David Servan-Schreiber’s, Anticancer: A New Way of Life is the book I wish I had read before contracting cancer, but it is also very useful in tying together in an immediate way important treatment modalities for those in early or advanced stages. Consequently this is also the book I wish I had read during the six month of remission I enjoyed. With it, I might have escaped the relapse.
The third work, Kelly A. Turner’s Radical Remission, The nine Key Factors that Can Make a Real Difference, Surviving Cancer Against All Odds, is the book that I most often turn to in my rather desperate effort to achieve my own radical remission. Both Servan-Schrieber and Turner introduce recipes for the use of particular foods, while proscribing many others foods. These sections can be of great utility to caregivers in planning meals which provide proper nutrition for the patient.
All three of these books, taken together, continually reinforce each other while also introducing new information and useful approaches to surviving cancer. I find myself first suggesting Servan-Shrieber to friends and family who do not yet have cancer.
The common link among them is the assumption that cancer is not so much a disease as a condition which easily flourishes when we neglect nutrition, exercise, and possible sources of toxic substances. They also accept the efficacy of conventional methods as well, though most of those had failed for the patients interviewed by Turner.
Good luck! If you wish to recommend other books you think would be valuable, please add them in a comment with some explanation as to why they should be included, and when I periodically update this essay I will add them, crediting you, of course!
Jeffrey
addendum of July 25. Out of my readings of these books I developed a method of prayer/mediation–which I am finding very useful in fighting my own cancer. I wrote up this method as a sermon which I will be presenting on the 27th as a guest sermon in our Methodist church. If you are interested, please see the sermon as a later posting on this blog…if you are not Christian, no worries, just start down at the section on my Cancer and prayer…
Chinatripper 