Beating Cancer Quotes

There was quite a lot of competitiveness about it, with everybody wanting to beat not only cancer itself, but also the other people in the room. Like, I realize that this is irrational, but when they tell you that you have, say, a 20 percent chance of living five years, the math kicks in and you figure that’s one in five . . . so you look around and think, as any healthy person would: I gotta outlast four of these bastards.

I'm starting to understand that fear is like cancer - you can beat it back, but if it returns, it can be worse than ever.

It's not in the mainstream media yet, but the biggest jump in skin cancer has occurred since the advent of sunscreens. That kind of thing makes me happy. The fact that people, in pursuit of a superficial look of health, give themselves a fatal disease. I love it when 'reasoning' human beings think they have figured out how to beat something and it comes right back and kicks them in the nuts. God bless the law of unintended consequences. And the irony is impressive: Healthy people, trying to look healthier, make themselves sick. Good!

It is not hard. Don’t you dare tell us this is hard. Quitting heroin is hard. Beating cancer is hard. Drinking your coffee black. Is. Not. Hard.

Relying on his own strength and the support of his family and community, Paul faced each stage of his illness with grace—not with bravado or a misguided faith that he would “overcome” or “beat” cancer but with an authenticity that allowed him to grieve the loss of the future he had planned and forge a new one. He cried on the day he was diagnosed. He cried while looking at a drawing we kept on the bathroom mirror that said, “I want to spend all the rest of my days here with you.” He cried on his last day in the operating room. He let himself be open and vulnerable, let himself be comforted. Even while terminally ill, Paul was fully alive; despite physical collapse, he remained vigorous, open, full of hope not for an unlikely cure but for days that were full of purpose and meaning.

To the normal person, waking up on Mondays can suck. Let's face it: who enjoys having to wake up early on a Monday to start your week over again? For me, it is something I've missed. I swear, when I beat this cancer I will never complain about it again. Why? Because it means I'm healthy. It means that it is a day other than Saturday. It means I have something to do, or somewhere else to be, other than at home, sick and feeling helpless.

When you die, it does not mean that you lose to cancer. You beat cancer by how you live, why you live, and the manner in which you live.” His words were as raw, honest, and powerful as the man himself.

I almost wish I had cancer. Then I’d either beat it or die from it. But my disease, even if successfully treated, will never go away. And it might not kill me. But it will hang over me like the blade of a guillotine; more threatening inert than if the blade suddenly slips and mercifully turns out my lights. This is my war to end all wars.

The night before brain surgery, I thought about death. I searched out my larger values, and I asked myself, if I was going to die, did I want to do it fighting and clawing or in peaceful surrender? What sort of character did I hope to show? Was I content with myself and what I had done with my life so far? I decided that I was essentially a good person, although I could have been better--but at the same time I understood that the cancer didn't care. I asked myself what I believed. I had never prayed a lot. I hoped hard, I wished hard, but I didn't pray. I had developed a certain distrust of organized religion growing up, but I felt I had the capacity to be a spiritual person, and to hold some fervent beliefs. Quite simply, I believed I had a responsibility to be a good person, and that meant fair, honest, hardworking, and honorable. If I did that, if I was good to my family, true to my friends, if I gave back to my community or to some cause, if I wasn't a liar, a cheat, or a thief, then I believed that should be enough. At the end of the day, if there was indeed some Body or presence standing there to judge me, I hoped I would be judged on whether I had lived a true life, not on whether I believed in a certain book, or whether I'd been baptized. If there was indeed a God at the end of my days, I hoped he didn't say, 'But you were never a Christian, so you're going the other way from heaven.' If so, I was going to reply, 'You know what? You're right. Fine.' I believed, too, in the doctors and the medicine and the surgeries--I believed in that. I believed in them. A person like Dr. Einhorn [his oncologist], that's someone to believe in, I thought, a person with the mind to develop an experimental treatment 20 years ago that now could save my life. I believed in the hard currency of his intelligence and his research. Beyond that, I had no idea where to draw the line between spiritual belief and science. But I knew this much: I believed in belief, for its own shining sake. To believe in the face of utter hopelessness, every article of evidence to the contrary, to ignore apparent catastrophe--what other choice was there? We do it every day, I realized. We are so much stronger than we imagine, and belief is one of the most valiant and long-lived human characteristics. To believe, when all along we humans know that nothing can cure the briefness of this life, that there is no remedy for our basic mortality, that is a form of bravery. To continue believing in yourself, believing in the doctors, believing in the treatment, believing in whatever I chose to believe in, that was the most important thing, I decided. It had to be. Without belief, we would be left with nothing but an overwhelming doom, every single day. And it will beat you. I didn't fully see, until the cancer, how we fight every day against the creeping negatives of the world, how we struggle daily against the slow lapping of cynicism. Dispiritedness and disappointment, these were the real perils of life, not some sudden illness or cataclysmic millennium doomsday. I knew now why people fear cancer: because it is a slow and inevitable death, it is the very definition of cynicism and loss of spirit. So, I believed.

Paul faced each stage of his illness with grace—not with bravado or a misguided faith that he would “overcome” or “beat” cancer but with an authenticity that allowed him to grieve the loss of the future he had planned and forge a new one.

Awful things happen to an awful lot of us & it's a happy moment when you start noticing some kind of payoff. Cancer survivors for ex, notice that they're breathing in a way other people don't. And because they are breathing they are grateful in a way a lot of people aren't. And grateful is a good place to wind up in life. It beats poor me.

The failure to accept cancer as a systemic disease is one of the greatest failures in modern medicine.

You are stronger than cancer beat it

Most would live into adulthood, as Patrick had. (Which meant there was quite a lot of competitiveness about it, with everybody wanting to beat not only cancer itself, but also the other people in the room. Like, I realize that this is irrational, but when they tell you that you have, say, a 20 percent chance of living five years, the math kicks in and you figure that’s one in five…so you look around and think, as any healthy person would: I gotta outlast four of these bastards.)

Empires die, like all of us dancers in the strobe-lit dark. See how the light needs shadows. Look: wrinkles spread like mildew over our peachy sheen; beat-by-beat-by-beat-by-beat-by-beat-by-beat, varicose veins worm through plucked calves; torsos and breasts fatten and sag...as last year's song hurtles into next year's song and the year after that, and the dancers' hairstyles frost, wither, and fall in chemotherapeutic tufts; cancer spatters inside this tarry lung, in that ageing pancreas, in this aching bollock; DNA frays like wool, and down we tumble; a fall on the stairs, a heart-attack, a stroke; not dancing but twitching...They knew it in the Middle Ages. Life is a terminal illness.

Men die all the time in fights or pipeline explosions or gas leaks. They fall from cooling towers or try to beat the train or get drunk and decide to clean their guns. Women are killed when they get cancer or marry badly or take rides with strange men.

As I looked at the great tapestry that was the accumulation of my life up to that point, I was able to identify exactly what had brought me to where I was today. Just look at my life path! Why, oh why, have I always been so harsh with myself? Why was I always beating myself up? Why was I always forsaking myself? Why did I never stand up for myself and show the world the beauty of my own soul? Why was I always suppressing my own intelligence and creativity to please others? I betrayed myself every time I said yes when I meant no! Why have I violated myself by always needing to seek approval from others just to be myself? Why haven’t I followed my own beautiful heart and spoken my own truth? Why don’t we realize this when we’re in our physical bodies? How come I never knew that we’re not supposed to be so tough on ourselves? I still felt myself completely enveloped in a sea of unconditional love and acceptance. I was able to look at myself with fresh eyes, and I saw that I was a beautiful being of the Universe. I understood that just the fact that I existed made me worthy of this tender regard

You see, natural cancer treatments don’t make money for the drug companies.

Like a good southern boy should, I'll start with my mom. She's a true baller, living proof that the value of denial depends on one's level of commitment to it. She beat two types of cancer on nothing more than aspirin and denial. She's a woman that says I'm going to before she can, I would before she could, and I'll be there before she's invited. Fiercely loyal to convenience and controversy, she's always had an adversarial relationship with context and consideration because they ask permission. She might not be the smartest person in the room but she ain't crying. She's 88 now, and seldom do I go to bed after her or wake up before her. Her curfew when she was growing up was when she danced holes big enough in the feet of her pantyhose that came up around her ankles. Nobody forgives himself quicker than she does and therefore, she carries zero stress. I once asked her if she ever went to bed with any regrets. She quickly told me, ‘Oh every night son, I just forget him by the time I wake up.’ She always told us, ‘Don't you walk into a place like you want to buy it, walk in like you own it.’ Obviously, her favorite word in the English language is ‘Yes.

Surveys suggest that about one third of all women worldwide face beatings in the home. Women aged fifteen through forty-four are more likely to be maimed or die from male violence than from cancer, malaria, traffic accidents, and war combined.

Unforgiveness is a prison. It slams the door on new beginnings and entrenches you in your present pain. It chains the heart and stops it from beating. It suffocates joy and paralyzes your ability to move on. Unforgiveness is the cancer of the soul. It slowly eats away the marrow of your existence and impairs your judgment, your personality and your ability to love again.

Reflecting on his physical therapy reminds me that I’m not a fan of the “fighting” metaphor for cancer. I don’t think you fight it, or beat it. The effort I saw Henry expend, again and again, at the age of one, under such duress, suggests someone who could beat anything that can be beaten. Cancer’s pretty much going to do what it wants. Should it come for me, I hope I’ll just ride the wave.

Gate C22 At gate C22 in the Portland airport a man in a broad-band leather hat kissed a woman arriving from Orange County. They kissed and kissed and kissed. Long after the other passengers clicked the handles of their carry-ons and wheeled briskly toward short-term parking, the couple stood there, arms wrapped around each other like he’d just staggered off the boat at Ellis Island, like she’d been released at last from ICU, snapped out of a coma, survived bone cancer, made it down from Annapurna in only the clothes she was wearing. Neither of them was young. His beard was gray. She carried a few extra pounds you could imagine her saying she had to lose. But they kissed lavish kisses like the ocean in the early morning, the way it gathers and swells, sucking each rock under, swallowing it again and again. We were all watching– passengers waiting for the delayed flight to San Jose, the stewardesses, the pilots, the aproned woman icing Cinnabons, the man selling sunglasses. We couldn’t look away. We could taste the kisses crushed in our mouths. But the best part was his face. When he drew back and looked at her, his smile soft with wonder, almost as though he were a mother still open from giving birth, as your mother must have looked at you, no matter what happened after–if she beat you or left you or you’re lonely now–you once lay there, the vernix not yet wiped off, and someone gazed at you as if you were the first sunrise seen from the Earth. The whole wing of the airport hushed, all of us trying to slip into that woman’s middle-aged body, her plaid Bermuda shorts, sleeveless blouse, glasses, little gold hoop earrings, tilting our heads up.

I hate that phrase – ‘beat cancer’. Cancer isn’t a war or a fight that you win or lose. It’s bad luck. It’s bad genes. It’s bad timing. It’s a postcode lottery. Call it what you will, just don’t call it a fight. Doing so makes all those who don’t make it weak. Or losers. I hate that.

Love is about giving, about caring for the other person's welfare. Love is treating someone, in the Kantian sense, never as a means but as an end in themselves. Love is sacrifice, love is something you work at, something you build like a house or tend like a plant, brick by brick, drop by drop, day by day. Nonsense. Old wives' tales, old husbands' tales. That is affection they are talking about, that is companionship, that is charity, that is tickets for the Cancer Research Ball. You must ask the young if you want to know what love is. Only they are deep enough in it to describe. We older ones have clues and simulacra, we base our judgement, like pathologists do, on the dents and scars and sediments of hearts long kept in formaldehyde. It is the pulsing heart you want to probe: the pulsing, beating, leaping, dipping, fluttering heart of a seventeen-year-old.

Alone, with tremendous empty longing and dread. The whole room for my thoughts. Nothing but myself and what I think, what I fear. Could think the most fanastic thoughts, could dance, grimace, curse, wail-nobody would ever know, nobody would ever hear. The thought of such absolute privacy is enough to drive me mad. It's like a clean birth. Everything cut away. Separate, naked, alone. Bliss and agony simultaneously. Time on your hands. Each second weighing on you like a mountain. You drown in it. Deserts, seas, lakes, oceans. Time beating away like a meat ax. Nothingness. The world. The me and the not-me. Oomaharumooma. Everything has to have a name. Everything has to be learned, tested, experencied.

doesn’t take long for man to mess up anything we get our hands on. Without God at the center, we eventually manage to make a mess of everything.

Why should I poison my body for odds that terrible?

It is not a crime to commit First Degree Writing

with all our technology, with all the things that make our lives easier, there's a price to be paid.

we need to realize that we begin to poison our bodies right from birth, and for some, even from the time of conception.

Sadly like cancer, we may never fully find a way to STOP bullying. But we can continue to work diligently to help empower children to rise above its despair and lead them to live healthy productive lives in their future. Bullying Ben

Have you ever seen a rabbit go to a pharmacy, a hospital, or a mental asylum?” he asks rhetorically. “They don’t look for medicine, they heal themselves or die. Humans aren’t so simple; they’ve let technology get in the way of who they really are.” It’s an idea that I’ve thought a lot about, and one that doesn’t always sit comfortably. Yes the modern world has its drawbacks, but nature can also be brutal. So I interrupt the budding diatribe. “But rabbits get eaten by wolves,” I say. Hof doesn’t skip a beat at my interjection. “Yes, they know fight and flight. The wolf chases them and they die. But everything dies one day. It is just that in our case we aren’t eaten by wolves. Instead, without predators, we’re being eaten by cancer, by diabetes, and our own immune systems. There’s no wolf to run from, so our bodies eat themselves.

If I don't beat the cancer growing inside of me, I want you to go on. I want you to find another woman to love. You have so much to give, so much love to share that I never want you to be alone again. If I’m not here anymore, I want to know that you’re happy and not alone. Don’t fall into the same despair you did after losing Maggie. Remember that sometimes it’s all just part of the journey we’re meant to travel to be with the one who’s destined to be ours.” The words are hard to say. Facing my mortality and knowing I can pass away makes my chest ache and my heart pound furiously, almost out of control.

it was violent and needy. It was a cancer, spreading inside my body, multiplying into hundreds and thousands of new cells with every beat of my heart. No chemotherapy, no miracle cure. Every heartbeat, I slipped a little more. Drowned a little deeper. Fell a little further into the bottomless ocean of feelings for him. I

It’s a Buddhist meditation that Teza uses to calm his mind, to put aside not just the physical pain but the sadness and rage he’s feeling: He starts to whisper a prayer. “Whatever beings there are, may they be free from suffering. Whatever beings there are, may they be free from enmity. Whatever beings there are, may they be free from hurtfulness. Whatever beings there are, may they be free from ill health. Whatever beings there are, may they be able to protect their own happiness.” “I particularly like that last phrase,” Mom said. “About protecting your own happiness.” “But how can you protect your own happiness when you can’t control the beatings?” I asked. “That’s the point, Will. You can’t control the beatings. But maybe you can have some control over your happiness. As long as he can, well then, he still has something worth living for. And when he’s no longer able, he knows he’s done all he can.” In my mind, I replaced the word beatings with cancer.

More than thirty studies have shown the protective effect of tomato consumption on prostate cancer.17 The Harvard Health Professionals Follow-Up Study examined 46,719 men for lycopene intake and found that consuming two to three cups of tomato sauce per week is associated with a 30 percent decreased risk of prostate cancer, which is consistent with the antiangiogenic effect of lycopene on cancer.18 In the men who did develop prostate cancer, those who ate more tomato sauce were found to have less angiogenic and less aggressive cancers.19 More than one thousand cultivars of tomatoes exist, and the amount of lycopene in each varies greatly.

Which meant there was quite a lot of competitiveness about it, with everybody wanting to beat not only cancer itself, but also the other people in the room. Like, I realize that this is irrational, but when they tell you that you have, say, a 20 percent chance of living five years, the math kicks in and you figure that’s one in five . . . so you look around and think, as any healthy person would: I gotta outlast four of these bastards.

He was big and strapping—until the cancer whittled him down, of course—but he looked like he couldn’t kill a fly. Oh, but he could. He once beat a rat to death with a hammer. He ate his steaks bloody. Men were deceitful that way. Even the most delicate of them had that flair for the primitive. In the hearts of men, all are hunters. All killers, were they not? It was in their blood. And yet they could appear so kind. One could never tell a man’s true nature from looks alone.

Like a good southern boy should, I'll start with my mom. She's a true baller, living proof that the value of denial depends on one's level of commitment to it. She beat two types of cancer on nothing more than aspirin and denial. She's a woman that says I'm going to before she can, I would before she could, and I'll be there before she's invited. Fiercely loyal to convenience and controversy, she's always had an adversarial relationship with context and consideration because they ask permission. She might not be the smartest person in the room but she ain't crying. She's 88 now, and seldom do I go to bed after her or wake up before her. Her curfew when she was growing up was when she danced holes big enough in the feet of her pantyhose that came up around her ankles. Nobody forgives themselves quicker than she does and therefore, she carries zero stress. I once asked her if she ever went to bed with any regrets. She quickly told me, ‘Oh every night son, I just forget him by the time I wake up.’ She always told us, ‘Don't you walk into a place like you want to buy it, walk in like you own it.’ Obviously, her favorite word in the English language is ‘Yes.

You have a life stretching out in front of you with a million possibilities,” Gat says. “It—it grates on me when you ask for sympathy, that’s all.” Gat, my Gat. He is right. He is. But he also doesn’t understand. “I know no one’s beating me,” I say, feeling defensive all of a sudden. “I know I have plenty of money and a good education. Food on the table. I’m not dying of cancer. Lots of people have it much worse than I. And I do know I was lucky to go to Europe. I shouldn’t complain about it or be ungrateful.” “Okay, then.” “But listen. You have no idea what it feels like to have headaches like this. No idea. It hurts,” I say—and I realize tears are running down my face, though I’m not sobbing. “It makes it hard to be alive, some days. A lot of times I wish I were dead, I truly do, just to make the pain stop.” “You do not,” he says harshly. “You do not wish you were dead. Don’t say that.” “I just want the pain to be over,” I say. “On the days the pills don’t work. I want it to end and I would do anything—really, anything—if I knew for sure it would end the pain.” There is a silence. He walks down to the bottom edge of the roof, facing away from me. “What do you do then? When it’s like that?” “Nothing. I lie there and wait, and remind myself over and over that it doesn’t last forever. That there will be another day and after that, yet another day. One of those days, I’ll get up and eat breakfast and feel okay.” “Another day.” “Yes.” Now he turns and bounds up the roof in a couple steps. Suddenly his arms are around me, and we are clinging to each other. He is shivering slightly and he kisses my neck with cold lips. We stay like that, enfolded in each other’s arms, for a minute or two and it feels like the universe is reorganizing itself, and I know any anger we felt has disappeared. Gat kisses me on the lips, and touches my cheek. I love him. I have always loved him. We stay up there on the roof for a very, very long time. Forever.

Things you shouldn’t do when someone is dying: Don’t talk about when your aunt or your grandmother or your dog died. This isn’t about you, and the sick person shouldn’t have to comfort you; it should be the other way around. There are concentric circles of grief: the patient is at the center, the next layer is the caregiver, then their kids, then close friends, and so on. Figure out what circle you’re in. If you are looking into the concentric circles, you give comfort. If you’re looking out, you receive it. Don’t say things that aren’t true: You’re going to beat this cancer! It’s all about a positive outlook! You look stronger! You aren’t fooling anyone. Don’t overact your happiness. It’s okay to be sad with someone who is dying. They’ve invited you close at a very tender time, and that’s a moment of grace you can share. Don’t think you have to discuss the illness. Sometimes, a sick person needs a break. And if you ask up front if he wants to talk about how he feels—or doesn’t—you’re giving him control at a time when he doesn’t have a lot of choices. Don’t be afraid of the silence. It’s okay to say nothing. Don’t forget: No one knows what to say to someone who’s dying. Everyone is afraid of saying the wrong thing. It’s more important to be there than to be right. Win and I have reached the stage where we can sit in quiet, without a background noise of NPR on the radio or the television murmuring.

Do you ever think? What? They were lying together on the sofa that had always been there, the crappy beat-up biscuit-colored sofa that was managing, as best it could, its promotion from threadbare junk to holy artifact. You know. What if I don't know? You fucking do. Okay, yeah. Yes. I, too, wonder if Dad worried so much about every single little goddamned thing . . . That he summoned it. Thanks. I couldn't say it. That some god or goddess heard him, one time too many, getting panicky about whether she'd been carjacked at the mall, or had, like, hair cancer . . . That they delivered the think even he couldn't imagine worrying about. It's not true. I know. But we're both thinking about it. That may have been their betrothal. That may have been when they took their vows: We are no longer siblings, we are mates, starship survivors, a two-man crew wandering the crags and crevices of a planet that may not be inhabited by anyone but us. We no longer need, or want, a father. Still, they really have to call him. It's been way too long.

He’d mentioned it a month before. A month. Not a good month, admittedly, but still—a month. That was enough time for him to have written something, at least. There was still something of him, or by him at least, floating around out there. I needed it. “I’m gonna go to his house,” I told Isaac. I hurried out to the minivan and hauled the oxygen cart up and into the passenger seat. I started the car. A hip-hop beat blared from the stereo, and as I reached to change the radio station, someone started rapping. In Swedish. I swiveled around and screamed when I saw Peter Van Houten sitting in the backseat. “I apologize for alarming you,” Peter Van Houten said over the rapping. He was still wearing the funeral suit, almost a week later. He smelled like he was sweating alcohol. “You’re welcome to keep the CD,” he said. “It’s Snook, one of the major Swedish—” “Ah ah ah ah GET OUT OF MY CAR.” I turned off the stereo. “It’s your mother’s car, as I understand it,” he said. “Also, it wasn’t locked.” “Oh, my God! Get out of the car or I’ll call nine-one-one. Dude, what is your problem?” “If only there were just one,” he mused. “I am here simply to apologize. You were correct in noting earlier that I am a pathetic little man, dependent upon alcohol. I had one acquaintance who only spent time with me because I paid her to do so—worse, still, she has since quit, leaving me the rare soul who cannot acquire companionship even through bribery. It is all true, Hazel. All that and more.” “Okay,” I said. It would have been a more moving speech had he not slurred his words. “You remind me of Anna.” “I remind a lot of people of a lot of people,” I answered. “I really have to go.” “So drive,” he said. “Get out.” “No. You remind me of Anna,” he said again. After a second, I put the car in reverse and backed out. I couldn’t make him leave, and I didn’t have to. I’d drive to Gus’s house, and Gus’s parents would make him leave. “You are, of course, familiar,” Van Houten said, “with Antonietta Meo.” “Yeah, no,” I said. I turned on the stereo, and the Swedish hip-hop blared, but Van Houten yelled over it. “She may soon be the youngest nonmartyr saint ever beatified by the Catholic Church. She had the same cancer that Mr. Waters had, osteosarcoma. They removed her right leg. The pain was excruciating. As Antonietta Meo lay dying at the ripened age of six from this agonizing cancer, she told her father, ‘Pain is like fabric: The stronger it is, the more it’s worth.’ Is that true, Hazel?” I wasn’t looking at him directly but at his reflection in the mirror. “No,” I shouted over the music. “That’s bullshit.” “But don’t you wish it were true!” he cried back. I cut the music. “I’m sorry I ruined your trip. You were too young. You were—” He broke down. As if he had a right to cry over Gus. Van Houten was just another of the endless mourners who did not know him, another too-late lamentation on his wall. “You didn’t ruin our trip, you self-important bastard. We had an awesome trip.” “I am trying,” he said. “I am trying, I swear.” It was around then that I realized Peter Van Houten had a dead person in his family. I considered the honesty with which he had written about cancer kids; the fact that he couldn’t speak to me in Amsterdam except to ask if I’d dressed like her on purpose; his shittiness around me and Augustus; his aching question about the relationship between pain’s extremity and its value. He sat back there drinking, an old man who’d been drunk for years.

To the infra-human specimens of this benighted scientific age the ritual and worship connected with the art of healing as practiced at Epidaurus seems like sheer buncombe. In our world the blind lead the blind and the sick go to the sick to be cured. We are making constant progress, but it is a progress which leads to the operating table, to the poor house, to the insane asylum, to the trenches. We have no healers – we have only butchers whose knowledge of anatomy entitles them to a diploma, which in turn entitles them to carve out or amputate our illnesses so that we may carry on in cripple fashion until such time as we are fit for the slaughterhouse. We announce the discovery of this cure and that but make no mention of the new diseases which we have created en route. The medical cult operates very much like the war office – the triumphs which they broadcast are sops thrown out to conceal death and disaster. The medicos, like the military authorities, are helpless; they are waging a hopeless fight from the start. What man wants is peace in order that he may live. Defeating our neighbor doesn’t give peace any more than curing cancer brings health. Man doesn’t begin to live through triumphing over his enemy nor does he begin to acquire health through endless cures. The joy of life comes through peace, which is not static but dynamic. No man can really say that he knows what joy is until he has experienced peace. And without joy there is no life, even if you have a dozen cars, six butlers, a castle, a private chapel and a bomb-proof vault. Our diseases are our attachments, be they habits, ideologies, ideals, principles, possessions, phobias, gods, cults, religions, what you please. Good wages can be a disease just as much as bad wages. Leisure can be just as great a disease as work. Whatever we cling to, even if it be hope or faith, can be the disease which carries us off. Surrender is absolute: if you cling to even the tiniest crumb you nourish the germ which will devour you. As for clinging to God, God long ago abandoned us in order that we might realize the joy of attaining godhood through our own efforts. All this whimpering that is going on in the dark, this insistent, piteous plea for peace which will grow bigger as the pain and the misery increase, where is it to be found? Peace, do people imagine that it is something to cornered, like corn or wheat? Is it something which can be pounded upon and devoured, as with wolves fighting over a carcass? I hear people talking about peace and their faces are clouded with anger or with hatred or with scorn and disdain, with pride and arrogance. There are people who want to fight to bring about peace- the most deluded souls of all. There will be no peace until murder is eliminated from the heart and mind. Murder is the apex of the broad pyramid whose base is the self. That which stands will have to fall. Everything which man has fought for will have to be relinquished before he can begin to live as man. Up till now he has been a sick beast and even his divinity stinks. He is master of many worlds and in his own he is a slave. What rules the world is the heart, not the brain, in every realm our conquests bring only death. We have turned our backs on the one realm wherein freedom lies. At Epidaurus, in the stillness, in the great peace that came over me, I heard the heart of the world beat. I know what the cure is: it is to give up, to relinquish, to surrender, so that our little hearts may beat in unison with the great heart of the world.

to an AirPort Express in his hospital room, announcing his surgery. He assured them that the type of pancreatic cancer he had “represents about 1% of the total cases of pancreatic cancer diagnosed each year, and can be cured by surgical removal if diagnosed in time (mine was).” He said he would not require chemotherapy or radiation treatment, and he planned to return to work in September. “While I’m out, I’ve asked Tim Cook to be responsible for Apple’s day to day operations, so we shouldn’t miss a beat. I’m sure I’ll be calling some of you way too much in August, and I look forward to seeing you in September.” One side effect of the operation would become a problem for Jobs because of his obsessive diets and the weird routines of purging and fasting that he had practiced since he was a teenager. Because the pancreas provides the enzymes that allow the stomach to digest food and absorb nutrients, removing part of the organ makes it hard to get enough protein. Patients are advised to make sure that they eat frequent meals and maintain a nutritious diet, with a wide variety of meat and fish proteins as well as full-fat milk products. Jobs had never done this, and he never would.

His tears couldn’t change that stony outcropping in his character any more than a single summer cloudburst can change the shape of rock. There were good uses for such hardness—she knew that, had known it as a woman raising a boy on her own in a city that cared little for mothers and less for their children—but Larry hadn’t found any yet. He was just what she had said he was: the same old Larry. He would go along, not thinking, getting people—including himself—into jams, and when the jams got bad enough, he would call upon that hard streak to extricate himself. As for the others? He would leave them to sink or swim on their own. Rock was tough, and there was toughness in his character, but he still used it destructively. She could see it in his eyes, read it in every line of his posture … even in the way he bobbed his cancer-stick to make those little rings in the air. He had never sharpened that hard piece of him into a blade to cut people with, and that was something, but when he needed it, he was still calling on it as a child did—as a bludgeon to beat his way out of traps he had dug for himself. Once, she had told herself Larry would change. She had; he would. But this was no boy in front of her; this was a grown-up man, and she feared that his days of change—the deep and fundamental sort her minister called a change of soul rather than one of heart—were behind him. There was something in Larry that gave you the bitter zing of hearing chalk screech on a blackboard. Deep inside, looking out, was only Larry. He was the only one allowed inside his heart. But she loved him.

THE DIET-GO-ROUND LOW-CALORIE DIETS Diets began by limiting the number of calories consumed in a day. But restricting calories depleted energy, so people craved high-calorie fat and sugar as energizing emergency fuel. LOW-FAT DIETS High-calorie fats were targeted. Restricting fat left people hungry, however, and they again craved more fats and sugars. FAKE FAT Synthetic low-cal fats were invented. People could now replace butter with margarine, but without calories it didn’t deliver the energy and satisfaction people needed. They still craved real fat and sugar. THE DIET GO-ROUND GRAPEFRUIT DIETS Banking on the antioxidant and fat-emulsifying properties of grapefruit, dieters could eat real fat again, as long as they ate a grapefruit first. But even grapefruits were no match for the high-fat American diet. SUGAR BLUES The more America restricted fat in any way to lose weight, the more the body rebounded by storing fat, and craving and bingeing on fats and sugars. Sugar was now to blame! SUGAR FREE High-calorie sugars were replaced with no-calorie synthetic sweeteners. The mind was happy but the body was starving as diet drinks replaced meals. People eventually binged on excess calories from other sources, such as protein. HIGH-PROTEIN DIETS The new diet let people eat all the protein they wanted without noticing the restriction of carbs and sugar. Energy came from fat stores and dieters lost weight. But without carbs, they soon experienced low energy and craved and binged on carbs. HIGH-CARB DIETS Carb-craving America was ripe for high-carb diets. You could now lose weight and eat up to 80 percent carbs—but they had to be slow-burning, complex carbs. Fast-paced America was addicted to fast energy, however, and high-carb diets soon became high-sugar diets. LOW CHOLESTEROL The combination of sugar, fat, and stress raised cholesterol to dangerous levels. The solution: Reemphasize complex carbs and reduce all animal fats. Once again, dieters felt restricted and began craving and bingeing on fats and sugars. EXERCISE Diets weren’t working, so exercise became the cholesterol cure-all. It worked for a time, but people didn’t like to “work out.” Within 25 years, no more than 20 percent of Americans would do it regularly. VEGETARIANISM With heart disease and cancers on the rise, red meat was targeted. Vegetarianism came into fashion but was rarely followed correctly. People lived on pasta and bread, and blood sugars and energy levels went out of control. GRAZING High-carb diets were causing energy and blood sugar problems. If you ate every 2 hours, energy was propped up and fast-paced America could keep speeding. Fatigue became chronic fatigue, however, with depression and anxiety to follow. FOOD COMBINING By eating fats, proteins, and carbs separately, digestion improved and a host of digestive, energy, and weight problems were helped temporarily. But the rules for what you could eat together led to more frequent small meals. People eventually slipped back to their old ways and old problems. THE ZONE Aimed at fixing blood sugar levels, this diet balanced intake of proteins, fats, and carbs. It worked, but again restricted certain kinds of carbs, so it didn’t last, and America was again craving emergency fuel. COFFEE TO THE RESCUE Exhausted and with a million things to do, America turned to legal stimulants like coffee for energy. But borrowed energy must be paid back, and many are still living in debt. FULL CIRCLE Frustrated, America is turning to new crash diets and a wave of high-protein diets. It is time to break this man-made cycle with the simplicity of nature’s own 3-Season Diet. If you let nature feed you, you will not starve or crave anything.

In my youth . . . my sacred youth . . . in eaves sole sparowe sat not more alone than I . . . in my youth, my saucer-deep youth, when I possessed a mirror and both a morning and an evening comb . . . in my youth, my pimpled, shame-faced, sugared youth, when I dreamed myself a fornicator and a poet; when life seemed to be ahead somewhere like a land o’ lakes vacation cottage, and I was pure tumescence, all seed, afloat like fuzz among the butterflies and bees; when I was the bursting pod of a fall weed; when I was the hum of sperm in the autumn air, the blue of it like watered silk, vellum to which I came in a soft cloud; O minstrel galleons of Carib fire, I sang then, knowing naught, clinging to the tall slim wheatweed which lay in a purple haze along the highway like a cotton star . . . in my fumbling, lubricious, my uticated youth, when a full bosom and a fine round line of Keats, Hart Crane, or Yeats produced in me the same effect—a moan throughout my molecules—in my limeade time, my uncorked innocence, my jellybelly days, when I repeated Olio de Oliva like a tenor; then I would touch the page in wonder as though it were a woman, as though I were blind in my bed, in the black backseat, behind the dark barn, the dim weekend tent, last dance, date's door, reaching the knee by the second feature, possibly the thigh, my finger an urgent emissary from my penis, alas as far away as Peking or Bangkok, so I took my heart in my hand, O my love, O my love, I sighed, O Christina, Italian rose; my inflated flesh yearning to press against that flesh becoming Word—a word—words which were wet and warm and responsive as a roaming tongue; and her hair was red, long, in ringlets, kiss me, love me up, she said in my anxious oral ear; I read: Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour; for I had oodles of needs, if England didn't; I was nothing but skin, pulp, and pit, in my grapevine time, during the hard-on priesthood of the poet; because then—in my unclean, foreskinned, and prurient youth—I devoutly believed in Later Life, in Passion, in Poetry, the way I thought only fools felt about God, prayer, heaven, foreknowledge, sin; for what was a poem if not a divine petition, a holy plea, a prophecy: [...] a stranger among strangers, myself the strangest because I could never bring myself to enter adolescence, but kept it about like a bit of lunch you think you may eat later, and later come upon at the bottom of a bag, dry as dust, at the back of the refrigerator, bearded with mold, or caked like sperm in the sock you've fucked, so that gingerly, then, you throw the mess out, averting your eyes, just as Rainer complained he never had a childhood—what luck!—never to have suffered birthpang, nightfear, cradlecap, lake in your lung; never to have practiced scales or sat numb before the dentist's hum or picked your mother up from the floor she's bled and wept and puked on; never to have been invaded by a tick, sucked by a leech, bitten by a spider, stung by a bee, slimed on by a slug, seared by a hot pan, or by paper or acquaintance cut, by father cuffed; never to have been lost in a crowd or store or parking lot or left by a lover without a word or arrogantly lied to or outrageously betrayed—really what luck!—never to have had a nickel roll with slow deliberation down a grate, a balloon burst, toy break; never to have skinned a knee, bruised a friendship, broken trust; never to have had to conjugate, keep quiet, tidy, bathe; to have lost the chance to be hollered at, bullied, beat up (being nothing, indeed, to have no death), and not to have had an earache, life's lessons to learn, or sums to add reluctantly right up to their bitter miscalculated end—what sublime good fortune, the Greek poet suggested—because Nature is not accustomed to life yet; it is too new, too incidental, this shiver in the stone, never altogether, and would just as soon (as Culp prefers to say) cancer it; erase, strike, stamp it out— [...]

Three to six hours per week (30 to 60 minutes per day) of moderate to vigorous exercise, ranging from walking to intense aerobic exercise, has been linked in numerous studies to a 20 to 40 percent reduction in cancer risk for 13 types of cancer.

Don't give the spirit of cancer the right to devour and break your body and breasts. Break its stronghold on your breasts and eradicate and sent it away by allowing the Holy Spirit of a Sovereign God to flow with his holy healing, cleansing and protecting power as you read this healing book. God Almighty in his Supernatural power will remove cancer, tumors and all illness from your breasts and will hinder and destroy the spirit of cancer from spreading in other parts of your body and internal organs. You beat cancer when you have this book breathed by the Holy Spirit of a Sovereign God for your salvation from cancer and you attain peace and great joy: Enjoy your life in great peace and fullness..God is the answer and God Almighty will do it for you....Yeah.

You’re a barrier breaker. You can defy the odds. You can beat the cancer, you can break the addiction, you can start the new business. You can go further than the experts have told you.

Doctors and drugs (medical errors) are the third-leading cause of death in the United States (behind heart disease and cancer). As reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association, over 250,000 Americans die each year from medical therapies, including at least 113,000 from the negative effects of prescription medications.

Dad, I'm not sure if I'm going to beat cancer, but I promise you, I'll never let cancer beat me

As if the island were a body, he had spent his life roaming it, searching for the cancer cells that came in every shape and form. If there was a dead-beat dad who failed to provide the proper support to his family, Max would set him on the right path. If a racist super harassed the tenants, Max would set him straight.

You don’t need to be someone you’re not. Haven’t you learned that? Stop being scared and face the world. I know you’re not in remission yet, but who can say they have been through cancer twice and beat it? Confront the world, Aundrea. You’re alive. Be proud of the strong woman you are and stop hiding behind your wig.

Instantly, I was overwhelmed with gratitude. I didn't know exactly what I was feeling, but my buddy JD - my best man, whom I had met at Northwestern - has seen his dad go through (and beat) esophageal cancer and explained it to me thusly: "When you have cancer, it's like you're at the bottom of a hole, and you just want to get out. Only it's too big for you to just climb out easily. But every good thing that happens - no matter how small - is like a rock in the side of the hole. You climb up, grabbing one little rock at a time. Had a good doctor's appointment? That's a rock. Feeling a little better today? That's a rock, too. Before you know it, you've climbed out of that hole, one little rock at a time. You just need to find the rocks.

Ketones also interfere with the ability of cancer cells to obtain energy, making tumors more likely to respond to treatment when the patient is adopting a ketogenic diet. In lab mice with brain tumors, the ketogenic diet can shrink tumors by 50 percent and lengthen survival.

But we’re just trading idols: we’re just moving the mold to a different room in the house. This is salvation by carving a piece of creation (job, beauty, money, etc.). We may be failures, we may be guilty, we may be foolish, we may make mistakes, we may be overweight, we may be ugly—but at least we have friends! at least we wear the right clothes! at least we have a membership at the gym! at least we celebrate our oddity, our perversion, our dysfunction, by hanging out with other people who have the same problem! In other words, this is authenticity by self-justification, by the justice of man. But everybody still ends up buried in the ground. And none of those friends can keep your heart beating. None of the smiles can keep your skin from wrinkling. None of those clubs can prevent cancer or Alzheimer’s. We need a better source of authenticity. This is why the answer to all insecurity and all failure is Jesus. Jesus is your righteousness.

The public is conditioned to believe new and better drugs are the answer to our medical problems, but that is seldom the case.

having trouble believing it’s more difficult for the cancer industry to find a cure for cancer than it was for science to find a way to go to the moon. But why would the industry want to find a cure when it’s so lucrative not to?

Sure, we need hospitals for broken bones, accidents, things like that. But for treating disease or chronic illness—hospitals are a death trap.

the medical system, at least here in the U.S., if something is found that works naturally—something that cannot be patented—it is removed from public view as quickly as possible and discredited as ineffective. At the same time, incredibly dangerous and ineffective synthetic drugs are routinely approved by the FDA and prescribed for the public.

The medical profession is being bought by the pharmaceutical industry, not only in terms of the practice of medicine, but also in terms of teaching and research. The academic institutions of this country are allowing themselves to be the paid agents of the pharmaceutical industry. I think it’s disgraceful.” — DR. ARNOLD S. RELMAN, former editor-in-chief of The New England Journal of Medicine, who coined the term “medical-industrial complex

STRESS was very probably the trigger.

We also learned the medical world calls a patient ‘cured’ if the cancer doesn’t return within five years.

Well, truth is often hard to hear, but truth is freeing. And regarding cancer, the truth is this: money—rather than what’s best for the patient—rules. And that’s the truth.

The FDA constantly approves drugs—not necessarily because they’re helpful to the patient but because they bring in money and profits to the huge pharmaceutical industry. True, some of the drugs extend the life of cancer patients—but none of them cure cancer.

The medical industry doesn’t want to cure cancer. The industry would lose too much money, too many jobs, and too much power.

The study went on to state that by prescribing toxic drugs, performing unnecessary surgeries, or simply making a mistake, doctors are causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of patients every year.

Having another Christian woman who was dealing with cancer, one I could talk to, had been a real help.

grabbed our hands and led us in prayer, asking God for guidance and His healing touch on our bodies.

Missing those all-important life events like weddings and grandchildren, not celebrating the victories and special experiences or being there to offer support and share the tears of painful circumstances that were sure to invade the lives of those I loved. My grandparents and parents were supposed to die before me. Leaving behind all the precious people in my life would be my greatest regret. I was a wife, mother, daughter, sister, and friend. I couldn’t imagine not being

You’re dealing with a deadly disease. There is no way you’re going to be able to work and fight this battle at the same time.

These may be good people, but now I realize they work in a broken system

Lord, my whole world is turning upside down. First the news about cancer. Then the doctors’ treatment plans. And now I find out the treatments may make things worse,

I beat cancer, I had kids, and I did this with a disability. You couldn’t knock me off that mountaintop.

Life is difficult and prayer would be the best gift I could give them.

Knowing God CAN heal you is not the same as knowing God WILL heal you!

God didn’t cause this cancer. I know He doesn’t make bad things happen to teach us a lesson. But He certainly allowed it.

right now the physical pain isn’t the problem. But my emotions?

Everyone dies, including me—which may be sooner rather than later. I need to be sure about where I’ll go when I die. I need to be ready for whatever happens. It’s time to revisit my beliefs. My eternal destination depends on knowing the truth.

have to be certain of the truth. The whole truth . . . the real truth . . . about eternal life.

And what about this one, Paula? ‘For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The blood of Jesus Christ His son cleanses us from all sin’?

Everyone in the business of cancer, from the doctors and nurses to the salespeople in the shops, seems to know just how to handle me. Do they go through some special training to make everything seem pleasant and natural?

How can I get better by getting sicker first?

I’ll keep praying and asking God to reveal something more—if there is more.

these drugs were initially derived from the nitrogen mustard gas experiments during World War I and World War II. These poisons—and that’s exactly what they are—kill all fast-growing cells. Well, since cancer cells are fast growing, some genius decided to try these chemicals on cancer.

chemotherapy does not work for the majority of cancers.’ And

But so far, I’m finding very little about rates of people being cured.

To start with, a person is considered ‘cured of cancer’ if they don’t die within five years of diagnosis.

chemotherapy as a cancer cure is pathetic.

He had shared his acquired distrust of the medical system with me after watching numerous friends die in hospitals because of what appeared to be incompetence.

More people die each year from preventable medical errors in hospitals than from breast cancer and automobile accidents combined.

It’s no life, Paula. It’s a living nightmare.

half of all men and one third of all women in the United States will develop cancer in their lifetime.

the cancer was in my lymph nodes and my doctor was afraid it had already spread.

Talking to others who understand what you’re going through can help.

Two of the five women had a recurrence of cancer. That’s a pretty high percentage. And who was to say cancer wouldn’t return in one or more of the other three? It started to become clear to us that the medical industry had created a cancer conveyor belt.