“
Writing isn't a source of pain. It's psychic chemotherapy. It reduces your psychological tumors and relieves your pain.
”
”
Dean Koontz (Odd Thomas (Odd Thomas, #1))
“
An oncology ward is a battlefield, and there are definite hierarchies of command. The patients, they're the ones doing the tour of duty. The doctors breeze in and out like conquering heroes, but they need to read your child's chart to remember where they've left off from the previous visit. It is the nurses who are the seasoned sergeants -- the ones who are there when your baby is shaking with such a high fever she needs to be bathed in ice, the ones who can teach you how to flush a central venous catheter, or suggest which patient floor might still have Popsicles left to be stolen, or tell you which dry cleaners know how to remove the stains of blood and chemotherapies from clothing. The nurses know the name of your daughter's stuffed walrus and show her how to make tissue paper flowers to twine around her IV stand. The doctors may be mapping out the war games, but it is the nurses who make the conflict bearable.
”
”
Jodi Picoult (My Sister’s Keeper)
“
I have heard one doctor call high-protein, high-fat, low-carbohydrate diets “make-yourself-sick” diets, and I think that’s an appropriate moniker. You can also lose weight by undergoing chemotherapy or starting a heroin addiction, but I wouldn’t recommend those, either.
”
”
T. Colin Campbell (The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted and the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss, and Long-term Health)
“
I’ve tried to imagine how she’d feel knowing that her cells went up in the first space missions to see what would happen to human cells in zero gravity, or that they helped with some of the most important advances in medicine: the polio vaccine, chemotherapy, cloning, gene mapping, in vitro fertilization. I’m pretty sure that she—like most of us—would be shocked to hear that there are trillions more of her cells growing in laboratories now than there ever were in her body.
”
”
Rebecca Skloot (The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks)
“
She wished she had cancer instead. She'd trade Alzheimer's for cancer in a heartbeat. She felt ashamed for wishing this, and it was certainly a pointless bargaining, but she permitted herself the fantasy anyway. With cancer, she'd have something to fight. There was surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. There was the chance that she could win. Her family and the community at Harvard would rally behind her battle and consider it noble. And even if it defeated her in the end, she'd be able to look them knowingly in the eye and say good-bye before she left.
”
”
Lisa Genova (Still Alice)
“
It's like they say about soldiers coming back from war. People all around you are dying. Really dying, Eric. You go in for a week's chemotherapy and you're in a ward with people who are really, actually dying, there and then and doing their best to come to terms with it. When the week's up, you go home and you see your family and your friends and everything's normal and familiar. It's too much. You think - one world can't possibly hold both these lives and you feel like you're going to go crazy when you realise the world is that big and it can fill with the most terrible things whenever it wants to.
”
”
Steven Hall (The Raw Shark Texts)
“
Every lawyer shall tell his or her client that becoming involved with the legal system is like three years of experimental chemotherapy, one hundred percent guaranteed not to work.
”
”
Lawrence Joseph (Lawyerland: An Unguarded, Street-Level Look At Law & Lawyers Today)
“
I love the imagery of struggle. I sometimes wish I were suffering in a good cause, or risking my life for the good of others, instead of just being a gravely endangered patient. Allow me to inform you, though, that when you sit in a room with a set of other finalists, and kindly people bring a huge transparent bag of poison and plug it into your arm, and you either read or don't read a book while the venom sack gradually empties itself into your system, the image of the ardent solider is the very last one that will occur to you. You feel swamped with passivity and impotence: dissolving in powerlessness like a sugar lump in water.
”
”
Christopher Hitchens (Mortality)
“
If it’s all true, then we’re in the citadel of unbelief, where nightmares are dispatched with Lysol and scalpels and chemotherapy rather than with stakes and Bibles and wild mountain thyme.
”
”
Stephen King ('Salem's Lot)
“
And all I could do while I listened to this dude tell me how punk rock saved his life was think, Wow. Why did my friend waste all that time going to chemotherapy? I guess we should have just played him a bunch of shitty Black Flag records.
”
”
Chuck Klosterman (Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto)
“
making some types of errors is the most rational thing to do, when the errors are of little cost, as they lead to discoveries. For instance, most medical “discoveries”are accidental to something else. An error-free world would have no penicillin, no chemotherapy…almost no drugs, and most probably no humans. This is why I have been against the state dictating to us what we “should”be doing: only evolution knows if the “wrong”thing is really wrong, provided there is skin in the game to allow for selection.
”
”
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life (Incerto, #5))
“
A landmark 2010 study from the Massachusetts General Hospital had even more startling findings. The researchers randomly assigned 151 patients with stage IV lung cancer, like Sara’s, to one of two possible approaches to treatment. Half received usual oncology care. The other half received usual oncology care plus parallel visits with a palliative care specialist. These are specialists in preventing and relieving the suffering of patients, and to see one, no determination of whether they are dying or not is required. If a person has serious, complex illness, palliative specialists are happy to help. The ones in the study discussed with the patients their goals and priorities for if and when their condition worsened. The result: those who saw a palliative care specialist stopped chemotherapy sooner, entered hospice far earlier, experienced less suffering at the end of their lives—and they lived 25 percent longer. In other words, our decision making in medicine has failed so spectacularly that we have reached the point of actively inflicting harm on patients rather than confronting the subject of mortality.
”
”
Atul Gawande (Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End)
“
But if you needed to HAVE AN IDEA, boredom could be to a roadblocked novel what chemotherapy was to a cancer patient.
”
”
Stephen King (Misery)
“
Behind the ticket counter stood a man as skinny as a soaked poodle. He sported a shirt of swatch-sized plaid and a blond ponytail that, unless destined for a chemotherapy patient, should have been immediately chopped off, buried in an unmarked grave, and never spoken of again. Hipsterdom's a tightrope strung across the canyon of douche-baggery. He clung by a finger.
”
”
Anthony Marra (The Tsar of Love and Techno)
“
isn’t a source of pain. It’s psychic chemotherapy. It reduces your psychological tumors and relieves your pain.
”
”
Dean Koontz (Odd Thomas (Odd Thomas, #1))
“
If you avoid the killer diseases and keep the degenerative ones under control with sensible diet and exercise and whatever chemotherapy you need to stay in balance, you can live nearly forever.
”
”
Wallace Stegner (New Short Novels 2)
“
This is from "Marabou Stork Nightmares".
Bernard's Poem:
Did you see her on the telly the other day
good family entertainment the tabloids say
But when you're backstage
at your new faeces audition
you hear the same old shite of your own selfish volition
She was never a singer
a comic or a dancer
I cant say I was sad
when I found out she had cancer
Great Britain's earthy northern
comedy queen
takes the rand, understand
from the racist Boer regime
So now her cells are fucked
and thats just tough titty
I remember her act
that I caught back in Sun City
She went on and on about
'them from the trees
with different skull shapes
from the likes of you and me'
Her Neo-Nazi spell
it left me fucking numb
the Boers lapped it up with zeal
so did the British ex-pat scum
But what goes round
comes round they say
so welcome to another dose
of chemotherapy
And for my part
it's time to be upfront
so fuck off and die
you carcinogenic cunt.
”
”
Irvine Welsh (Marabou Stork Nightmares)
“
It reminded Lacy of running into someone you hadn't seen for a while, and finding her bald and missing her eyebrows: you knew she was in the throes of chemotherapy, but pretended you didn't, because it was easier that way for both of you.
”
”
Jodi Picoult (Nineteen Minutes)
“
Writing isn’t a source of pain. It’s psychic chemotherapy. It reduces your psychological tumors and relieves your pain.
”
”
Dean Koontz (Odd Thomas (Odd Thomas, #1))
“
Cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy need only one hour of animal-assisted therapy a week to see their depression and anxiety reduced by half.
”
”
Christopher McDougall (Running with Sherman: How a Rescue Donkey Inspired a Rag-tag Gang of Runners to Enter the Craziest Race in America)
“
The first time around, she’d done the surgeries, the radiation, the chemotherapy. She’d lost her hair, lost her appetite and her energy, lost her left breast and six months of her life.
”
”
Jennifer Weiner (Mrs. Everything)
“
The result: those who saw a palliative care specialist stopped chemotherapy sooner, entered hospice far earlier, experienced less suffering at the end of their lives—and they lived 25 percent longer. In other words, our decision making in medicine has failed so spectacularly that we have reached the point of actively inflicting harm on patients rather than confronting the subject of mortality. If end-of-life discussions were an experimental drug, the FDA would approve it.
”
”
Atul Gawande (Being Mortal: Illness, Medicine and What Matters in the End (Wellcome Collection))
“
many of my patients continued to smoke, often furtively, during their treatment for cancer (I could smell the acrid whiff of tobacco on their clothes as they signed the consent forms for chemotherapy).
”
”
Siddhartha Mukherjee (The Emperor of All Maladies)
“
She described her new treatment with a topical chemotherapy that came in the form of a potent cream that she applied, wearing gloves, to burn off the cancerous areas—then she produced a package of the stuff from the bathroom so I could see how mundane this lifesaving medication looked. I blinked in disbelief as she held up what resembled a tube of toothpaste, and explained that each one cost over two thousand dollars. Or that’s what it would cost, if not for the insurance she had purchased through the health insurance exchanges that had been set up as part of Obamacare. I thought—and spoke—of that moment often, later, as I talked about why health policy was not a theoretical question for our family.
”
”
Pete Buttigieg (Shortest Way Home: One Mayor's Challenge and a Model for America's Future)
“
Surgery, clamps, sutures, bandages, antibiotics Mop Sucking chest wound Anesthesia, surgery Cork Cancer Chemotherapy, radiation, surgery Casket wreath* 13 Diabetes Insulin Leeches* 14 Hatchet embedded in skull Removal of hatchet, treatment of wound Larger hat Eyes gouged out in hospital by psychopath posing as nurse Prosthetic eyeballs, therapy Six-pack Source:
”
”
Dave Barry (Dave Barry's Money Secrets: Like: Why Is There a Giant Eyeball on the Dollar?)
“
One day in my pharmacology class, we were discussing the possibility of legalizing marijuana. The class was pretty evenly divided between those that advocated legalizing marijuana and those that did not. The professor said he wanted to hear from a few people on both sides of the argument. A couple students had the opportunity to stand in front of the class and present their arguments. One student got up and spoke about how any kind of marijuana use was morally wrong and how nobody in the class could give him any example of someone who needed marijuana.
A small girl in the back of the classroom raised her hand and said that she didn’t want to get up, but just wanted to comment that there are SOME situations in which people might need marijuana. The same boy from before spoke up and said that she needed to back up her statements and that he still stood by the fact that there wasn’t anyone who truly needed marijuana.
The same girl in the back of the classroom slowly stood up. As she raised her head to look at the boy, I could physically see her calling on every drop of confidence in her body. She told us that her husband had cancer. She started to tear up, as she related how he couldn’t take any of the painkillers to deal with the radiation and chemotherapy treatments. His body was allergic and would have violent reactions to them. She told us how he had finally given in and tried marijuana. Not only did it help him to feel better, but it allowed him to have enough of an appetite to get the nutrients he so desperately needed.
She started to sob as she told us that for the past month she had to meet with drug dealers to buy her husband the only medicine that would take the pain away. She struggled every day because according to society, she was a criminal, but she was willing to do anything she could to help her sick husband. Sobbing uncontrollably now, she ran out of the classroom. The whole classroom sat there in silence for a few minutes. Eventually, my professor asked, “Is there anyone that thinks this girl is doing something wrong?” Not one person raised their hand.
”
”
Daniel Willey
“
Can any of us pinpoint the moment when we've lost our younger selves, lost joy in the simple things, stopped celebrating life? For years-decades-we work, raise a family, plant begonias. Then one day we wake up to chemotherapy and eulogies and nursing home visits and the realization that we haven't had a real vacation in years. And all we can do is ask: how did life get so hard?
”
”
Cheryl Jarvis (The Necklace: Thirteen Women and the Experiment That Transformed Their Lives)
“
By not talking about death with our loved ones, not being clear through advanced directives, DNR (do not resuscitate) orders, and funeral plans, we are directly contributing to this future ... and a rather bleak present, at that. Rather than engage in larger societal discussions about dignified ways for the terminally ill to end their lives, we accept intolerable cases like that of Angelita, a widow in Oakland who covered her head with a plastic bag because the arthritic pain of her gnarled joints was too much to bear. Or that of Victor in Los Angeles, who hung himself from the rafters of his apartment after his third unsuccessful round of chemotherapy, leaving his son to discover his body. Or the countless bodies with decubitus ulcers, more painful for me to care for them even babies or suicides. When these bodies come into the funeral home, I can only offer my sympathy to their living relatives, and promise to work to ensure that more people are not robbed of a dignified death by a culture of silence.
”
”
Caitlin Doughty (Smoke Gets in Your Eyes & Other Lessons from the Crematory)
“
Every drug, the sixteenth-century physician Paracelsus once opined, is a poison in disguise. Cancer chemotherapy, consumed by its fiery obsession to obliterate the cancer cell, found its roots in the obverse logic: every poison might be a drug in disguise.
”
”
Siddhartha Mukherjee
“
They also received much less aggressive care at the end of their lives, with fewer rounds of chemotherapy and longer hospice stays. But the researchers were surprised to find something else. The palliative care group survived for an average of 11.6 months, compared to 8.9 months for the control group.30
”
”
Jo Marchant (Cure: A Journey into the Science of Mind Over Body)
“
Mihalovic and other critics claim that chemotherapy, in actuality, boosts cancer growth and long-term mortality rates by destroying the immune system, increasing neurocognitive decline, disrupting endocrine functioning, and causing organ and metabolic toxicities. Patients basically live in a permanent state of disease until their death.
”
”
Jim Marrs (Population Control: How Corporate Owners Are Killing Us)
“
sutures, bandages, antibiotics Mop Sucking chest wound Anesthesia, surgery Cork Cancer Chemotherapy, radiation, surgery Casket wreath* 13 Diabetes Insulin Leeches* 14 Hatchet embedded in skull Removal of hatchet, treatment of wound Larger hat Eyes gouged out in hospital by psychopath posing as nurse Prosthetic eyeballs, therapy Six-pack Source:
”
”
Dave Barry (Dave Barry's Money Secrets: Like: Why Is There a Giant Eyeball on the Dollar?)
“
One recent experiment, for instance, demonstrated that people who died shortly after undergoing chemotherapy decomposed far more slowly than what I’d since begun to think of as “organic” or “all natural” bodies. Chemotherapy, in other words, bore more than a passing resemblance to antemortem embalming, which was not a particularly comforting notion.
”
”
Jefferson Bass (Flesh and Bone (Body Farm, #2))
“
Why does chemo always have side effects like sickness and hair loss?
Why not 'invisibility' or 'spontaneous orgasms'?
”
”
Lawrence Wray
“
You wouldn’t believe all the nice people I’ve met at chemotherapy,” she
”
”
Ann Patchett (The Getaway Car: A Practical Memoir About Writing and Life)
“
I stared at it for so long, wondering why some people are saved by miracles and others aren't. Why chemotherapy works for some but didn't work for my mom.
”
”
S.M. Webb (Spirited: No Accidents)
“
Toxic parents make everything about them—your triumphs, your losses, the day you give birth, a family funeral, the day you go in to get chemotherapy.
”
”
Ramani S. Durvasula ("Don't You Know Who I Am?": How to Stay Sane in an Era of Narcissism, Entitlement, and Incivility)
“
The result: those who saw a palliative care specialist stopped chemotherapy sooner, entered hospice far earlier, experienced less suffering at the end of their lives—and they lived 25 percent longer.
”
”
Atul Gawande (Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End)
“
One interesting quality of NSCs is that they naturally gravitate toward any brain tumor. What if, our team wondered, they could be tweaked to deliver chemotherapy selectively to the cancer while sparing the rest of the brain?
”
”
Rahul Jandial (Life Lessons From A Brain Surgeon: Practical Strategies for Peak Health and Performance)
“
Kent Myers was an asshole. We had the unfortunate pleasure of sitting across from each other at our chemotherapy appointments. Or as Kent liked to call it, ‘Fuck this bullshit in the fucking ass.’ He had a way with words. He always gave the nurses a hard time, calling them dumbasses when they missed his veins for the IVs. He called one nurse Susie, even though his name was Steven. He called me the annoyingly positive cancer girl who quoted dead people.
”
”
Brittainy C. Cherry (Art & Soul)
“
Are you scared?”
“Of what?”
“Dying.” Jemma was nothing, if she was not blunt.
“I’m not expecting to die, Jemma. I’m expecting to have treatment, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, whatever it takes, but I’m expecting to come through this.
”
”
Calvin Wade (Forever Is over)
“
Mutations litter the chromosomes. In individual specimens of breast and colon cancer, between fifty to eighty genes are mutated; in pancreatic cancers, about fifty to sixty. Even brain cancers, which often develop at earlier ages and hence may be expected to accumulate fewer mutations, possess about forty to fifty mutated genes. Only a few cancers are notable exceptions to this rule, possessing relatively few mutations across the genome. One of these is an old culprit, acute lymphoblastic leukemia: only five or ten genetic alterations cross its otherwise pristine genomic landscape.* Indeed, the relative paucity of genetic aberrancy in this leukemia may be one reason that this tumor is so easily felled by cytotoxic chemotherapy. Scientists speculate that genetically simple tumors (i.e., those carrying few mutations) might inherently be more susceptible to drugs, and thus intrinsically more curable. If so, the strange discrepancy between the success of high-dose chemotherapy in curing leukemia and its failure to cure most other cancers has a deep biological explanation. The search for a “universal cure” for cancer was predicated on a tumor that, genetically speaking, is far from universal. In
”
”
Siddhartha Mukherjee (The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer)
“
The poison that is war does not free us from the ethics of responsibility. There are times when we must take this poison - just as a person with cancer accepts chemotherapy to live. We can not succumb to despair. Force is and I suspect always will be part of the human condition. There are times when the force wielded by one immoral faction must be countered by a faction that, while never moral, is perhaps less immoral.
We in the industrialized world bear responsibility for the world’s genocides because we had the power to intervene and did not. We stood by and watched the slaughter in Chechnya, Sri Lanka, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Rwanda where a million people died. The blood for the victims of Srebrenica- a designated UN safe area in Bosnia- is on our hands. The generation before mine watched, with much the same passivity, the genocides of Germany, Poland, Hungary, Greece, and the Ukraine. These slaughters were, as in, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s book Chronical of a Death Foretold, often announced in advance
”
”
Chris Hedges (War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning)
“
I already knew the incredible profits in chemotherapy, and how those profits led to an insidious push for that treatment: when patients suggested another approach, physicians could be condescending, dismissing alternatives as risky, unproven, even quackery.
”
”
Mitch Albom (Finding Chika: A Little Girl, an Earthquake, and the Making of a Family)
“
Science is not designed to give us morals. It can help us build chemical weapons and chemotherapy drugs, but it cannot tell us whether and when to use them. As we saw in the last chapter, science cannot ground the belief that human beings should be valued equally.
”
”
Rebecca McLaughlin (Confronting Christianity: 12 Hard Questions for the World's Largest Religion)
“
No experimental cures. No life-prolonging – and misery-prolonging – chemotherapy. As far as Colton was concerned, he had made his plans and said his goodbyes and was now letting the tide go out, ever so slightly; the waves came less far up the beach; the sea got further and further from view, bit by bit.
”
”
Jenny Colgan (Christmas on the Island (Mure, #3))
“
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
”
”
L.J. Shen (Sparrow (Boston Belles, #0.5))
“
The cancer pavilion is a cruel democracy of appearance: the same bald head, the same devastated complexion, the same steroid-swollen face, the same plastic chemotherapy port visible as a lump under your skin. The old seem infantile, the young act senile, the middle-aged find all that is middle-aged about them disappears.
”
”
Anne Boyer (The Undying)
“
Well, at least you'll get some down time to heal up before the chemo. Of course, that sounds kind of like in The Princess Bride when they heal Westley up before they torture him.
”
”
Abigail Barnette (The Girlfriend (The Boss, #2))
“
Don't delegate your survival to the doctors and hope for the best.
You have to participate in your own cure.
You have to fight.
”
”
Lawrence Wray
“
Disobey God and you are forgiven. Disobey Nature and you get disease.
”
”
Nancy S. Mure (EAT! Empower Adjust Triumph!)
“
An unhealthy life is destined to end with an unhealthy death.
”
”
Nancy S. Mure (EAT! Empower. Adjust. Triumph!: Lose Ridiculous Weight, Succeed On Any Diet Plan, Bust Through Any Plateau in 3 Empowering Steps!)
“
They say the Lord never gives us more than we can bear. This is only true of money and cleavage.
”
”
Joni Rodgers (Bald in the Land of Big Hair: A True Story)
“
The cure for HIV?” “In 2007, a man named Timothy Ray Brown, known later as the Berlin patient, was cured of HIV. Brown was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. His HIV-positive status complicated his treatment. During chemotherapy, he battled sepsis, and his physicians had to explore less traditional approaches. His hematologist, Dr. Gero Hutter, decided on a stem cell therapy: a full bone marrow transplant. Hutter actually passed over the matched bone marrow donor for a donor with a specific genetic mutation: CCR5-Delta 32. CCR5-Delta 32 makes cells immune to HIV.” “Incredible.” “Yes. At first, we thought the Delta 32 mutation must have arisen during the Black Death in Europe—about four to sixteen percent of Europeans have at least one copy. But we’ve traced it back further. We thought perhaps smallpox, but we’ve found Bronze Age DNA samples that carry it. The mutation’s origins are a mystery, but one thing is certain: the bone marrow transplant with CCR5-Delta 32 cured both Brown’s leukemia and HIV. After the transplant, he stopped taking his antiretrovirals and has never again tested positive for HIV.
”
”
A.G. Riddle (The Atlantis Plague (The Origin Mystery, #2))
“
It is never lost on me that the women in the waiting room have had to walk past these protesters, too. Even if they were escorted to the door by a cheerful young pro-choice activist with bright pink hair who carries a protective rainbow umbrella, they’ve heard the vitriol—different from the insults hurled at me, but no less offensive. “Think twice!” “Don’t murder your baby!” The antis shout these things, as if these women had not minds of their own. As if their decision fails to merit respect. As if they were not, as most of them are, adults exercising a legal right to make a private health-care decision for themselves. (Imagine, if you will, these verbal assaults being hurled at any other person for having made any other consequential health-care choice: the decision to pursue a potentially fatal course of chemotherapy, for example. “Don’t risk your life! Suicide!”)
”
”
Willie Parker (Life's Work: A Moral Argument for Choice)
“
Both women were mothers of children caught up in mind control cover-up, one of which paralleled Kelly’s and my case. She, too, had volumes of documents and evidences whereby it was inexcusable that justice had not prevailed. The other mother conveyed a story that touched me so deeply it undoubtedly will continue to motivate me with reverberating passion forever. This mother was very weak from the final stages of cancer and chemotherapy, and tears slid down her pale gray cheeks as she told me her story. When she reported sexual abuse of her three daughters, the local court system took custody of them. The children appeared dissociative identity disordered from their ordeal, yet were reportedly denied therapy and placed in Foster care “since the mother was dying anyway.” When she finally was granted brief visitation with her precious daughters, they looked dazed and robotic with no memory of her or their sexual abuse. Mind control was apparent to this mother, and she struggled to give voice to their plight to no avail. She explained how love and concern for her children had kept her alive far longer than her doctors thought possible. She embraced me and said, “Now I can die in peace knowing that you are out there talking, raising awareness with the same passion for justice and love for children that I have. Thank you. Please keep talking. Please remember my daughters.
”
”
Cathy O'Brien (ACCESS DENIED For Reasons Of National Security: Documented Journey From CIA Mind Control Slave To U.S. Government Whistleblower)
“
We do not consider the many causes of weight loss. We don’t remember troubling weight loss is sometimes prompted by grief from a breakup, divorce, or death. We don’t think about weight loss caused by cancer or chemotherapy. We don’t consider that the person in front of us might be going through a medical crisis, their weight loss a sign of abrupt and troubling change rather than hard-fought victory. And we don’t consider that weight loss is sometimes linked to declining mental health or a new wave of disordered eating. In our eagerness to compliment what we assume is desired weight loss, many of us end up congratulating restrictive eating disorders, grief, and trauma in the process, revealing that we are in a constant state of surveillance, monitoring and assessing the bodies of those around us. We keep our disappointment and displeasure quiet, revealing our disapproval of fatness only in our celebration of thinness.
”
”
Aubrey Gordon (“You Just Need to Lose Weight”: And 19 Other Myths About Fat People)
“
[Ruth Bader] Ginsburg, the former women's rights advocate, made sure the nation knew she was there, even if alone. When President Obama addressed a joint session of Congress for the first time in February 2009, Ginsburg was recovering from pancreatic cancer and chemotherapy treatments, but she dragged herself to the evening event and sat with her brethren. She said she wanted to make sure that people watching the nationally televised address saw that the Supreme Court had at least one woman.
”
”
Joan Biskupic (Breaking In: The Rise of Sonia Sotomayor and the Politics of Justice)
“
Take Avastin, the world’s best-selling cancer medicine, with sales of $6 billion in 2010. It is used for the treatment of advanced cancers of the colon, breast, lung, and kidney, among others. An analysis of sixteen trials with more than ten thousand people showed that when Avastin was added to chemotherapy, more people died than when receiving chemotherapy alone.35 Thus, not only did the drug fail to prolong lives of hopeful patients for a few weeks or months, it in fact shortened them. Given the huge amount of money at stake for the pharmaceutical industry (Avastin treatment
”
”
Gerd Gigerenzer (Risk Savvy: How To Make Good Decisions)
“
When we encounter hardship, if God doesn't answer our first prayer-and our
first prayer is almost always, "God, please take away the pain"-then we can pray: "Okay then, Lord, please use the pain for your purposes. Put me into ministry with others who need to know your comfort." We can pray, "I wish I had a job, but use me this week in the unemployment line"; "I pray for a relief of my loneliness, but use me to reach out to refugees who may be far lonelier than I"; "I'm praying that you will heal this cancer, but if you don't, please use me this week at my chemotherapy treatment.."7
”
”
Paul Borthwick (Western Christians in Global Mission: What's the Role of the North American Church?)
“
These days, the cancer cells often need another mutation to thrive: one that will outwit the chemotherapy or radiotherapy to which the cancer is subjected. Somewhere in the body, one of the cancer cells happens to acquire a mutation that defeats the drug. As the rest of the cancer dies away, the descendants of this rogue cell gradually begin to multiply, and the cancer returns. Heartbreakingly, this is what happens all too often in the treatment of cancer: initial success followed by eventual failure. It’s an evolutionary arms race. The more we understand genomics, the more it confirms evolution.
”
”
Matt Ridley (The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge)
“
It’s true, organic food is more expensive to grow, and we have to be willing to pay for it. Some people see that as a luxury. I always come back to the same question: Would we rather give our money to the farmer or the pharmacist, the grocer or the doctor? Do we want to spend a fortune in the future trying to fix the damage being done today? Once we compare the potential risk and reward, the extra cost of eating clean food may seem worth it. Eating is the single most important thing we can do to stay healthy. If good, clean food isn’t worth our money, what is? Organic blackberries cost double the normal kind? How does that compare to the price of chemotherapy? How does burning out your insides with toxic chemicals and destroying your immune system and puking out your guts and losing all your hair stack up against spending three dollars more on that organic produce? Your body responds to what you put inside it. It’s simple. How could anything else be possible? You’d accept that if we were talking about your car. Why not your body? Clean also means food that contains no genetically modified organisms—GMOs. This is the really scary stuff, and it’s in the news every day as the big corporations fight every effort to label engineered foods. The fact that the industry is against truth in labeling tells us all we need to know.
”
”
Darin Olien (SuperLife: The 5 Simple Fixes That Will Make You Healthy, Fit, and Eternally Awesome)
“
War means endless waiting, endless boredom. There is no electricity, so no television. You can't read. You can't see friends. You grow depressed but there is no treatment for it and it makes no sense to complain — everyone is as badly off as you. It's hard to fall in love, or rather, hard to stay in love. If you are a teenager, you seem halted in time.
If you are critically ill — with cancer, for instance — there is no chemotherapy for you. If you can't leave the country for treatment, you stay and die slowly, and in tremendous pain. Victorian diseases return — polio, typhoid and cholera. You see very sick people around you who seemed in perfectly good health when you last saw them during peacetime. You hear coughing all the time. Everyone hacks — from the dust of destroyed buildings, from disease, from cold.
As for your old world, it disappears, like the smoke from a cigarette you can no longer afford to buy. Where are your closest friends? Some have left, others are dead. The few who remain have nothing new to talk about. You can't get to their houses, because the road is blocked by checkpoints. Or snipers take a shot when you leave your door, so you scurry back inside, like a crab retreating inside its shell. Or you might go out on the wrong day and a barrel bomb, dropped by a government helicopter, lands near you.
Wartime looks like this.
”
”
Janine Di Giovanni (The Morning They Came for Us: Dispatches from Syria)
“
Steve Harmon, thirty-six, had esophageal cancer growing at the inlet of his stomach. For six months, he had soldiered through chemotherapy as if caught in a mythical punishment cycle devised by the Greeks. He was debilitated by perhaps the severest forms of nausea that I had ever encountered in a patient, but he had to keep eating to avoid losing weight. As the tumor whittled him down week by week, he became fixated, absurdly, on the measurement of his weight down to a fraction of an ounce, as if gripped by the fear that he might vanish altogether by reaching zero. Meanwhile, a growing retinue of family members accompanied him to his clinic visits: three children who came with games and books and watched, unbearably, as their father shook with chills one morning; a brother who hovered suspiciously, then accusingly, as we shuffled and reshuffled medicines to keep Steve from throwing up; a wife who bravely shepherded the entire retinue through the whole affair as if it were a family trip gone horribly wrong. One morning, finding Steve alone on one of the reclining chairs of the infusion room, I asked him whether he would rather have the chemotherapy alone, in a private room. Was it, perhaps, too much for his family—for his children? He looked away with a flicker of irritation. “I know what the statistics are.” His voice was strained, as if tightening against a harness. “Left to myself, I would not even try. I’m doing this because of the kids.
”
”
Siddhartha Mukherjee (The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer)
“
It reminds me of a girl I once knew who was dying of cancer. I visited her in the hospital and did not recognize her; sitting up in her bed she looked like a little old hairless man. From the chemotherapy she had swollen up like a great grape. From the cancer and the therapy she had become virtually blind, nearly deaf, underwent constant seizures, and when I bent close to her to ask her how she felt she answered, when she could understand my question, "I feel that God is healing me." She had been religiously inclined and had planned to go into a religious order. On the metal stand beside her bed she had, or someone had, laid out her rosary. In my opinion a FUCK YOU, GOD sign would have been appropriate; the rosary was not.
”
”
Philip K. Dick (VALIS)
“
For more than twenty years I have offered a very simple yet powerful ritual to people before their radiation, chemotherapy, or surgery. I suggest they meet together with some of their closest friends and family the day before their procedure. Before this meeting, I suggest they find an ordinary stone, a piece of the earth, big enough to fit in the palm of their hand, and bring it to the meeting with them. The ritual begins by having everyone sit in a circle. In any order they wish to speak, each person tells the story of a time when they too faced a crisis. People may talk about the death of important persons, the loss of jobs or of relationships, or even about their own illnesses. The person who is speaking holds the stone the patient has brought. When they finish telling their story of survival, they take a moment to reflect on the personal quality that they feel helped them come through that difficult time. People will say things such as, 'What brought me through was determination,' 'What brought me through was faith,' 'What brought me through was humor.' When they have named the quality of their strength, they speak directly to the person preparing for surgery or treatment, saying, 'I put determination into this stone for you,' or, 'I put faith into this stone for you.' After everyone has spoken the stone is given back to the patient, who takes it with them to the hospital, to keep nearby and hold in their hand when things get hard. In an environment which is highly technical and sterile, it connects them to the earth and to each other.
”
”
Rachel Naomi Remen (Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories that Heal)
“
He generally traveled to Europe four or five times a year. The pharmaceutical empire he ran had research centers in Germany, Switzerland, and France, and huge laboratories and factories in England. It was always interesting coming over here, exchanging ideas with their research teams, and exploring new avenues of marketing, which was his real forte. But this time it was far more than that, far more than just a research trip, or the unveiling of a new product. He was here for the birth of “his baby.” Vicotec. His life’s dream. Vicotec was going to change the lives and the outlook of all people with cancer. It was going to dramatically alter maintenance programs, and the very nature of chemotherapy the world over. It would be Peter’s one major contribution to the human race. For the past four years, other than his family, it was what he had lived for. And undeniably, it was going to make Wilson-Donovan millions. More than that, obviously, their studies had already projected earnings in the first five years to well over a
”
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Danielle Steel (Five Days in Paris)
“
They took my mother’s stomach out about six months ago. At that point, there wasn’t a lot left to remove—they had already taken out [I would use the medical terms here if I knew them] the rest of it about a year before. Then they tied the [something] to the [something], hoped that they had removed the offending portion, and set her on a schedule of chemotherapy. But of course they didn’t get it all. They had left some of it and it had grown, it had come back, it had laid eggs, was stowed away, was stuck to the side of the spaceship. She had seemed good for a while, had done the chemo, had gotten the wigs, and then her hair had grown back—darker, more brittle. But six months later she began to have pain again— Was it indigestion? It could just be indigestion, of course, the burping and the pain, the leaning over the kitchen table at dinner; people have indigestion; people take Tums; Hey Mom, should I get some Tums?—but when she went in again, and they had “opened her up”—a phrase they used—and had looked inside, it was staring out at them, at the doctors, like a thousand writhing worms under a rock, swarming, shimmering, wet and oily—
”
”
Dave Eggers (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius)
“
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.
”
”
Walter Isaacson (Steve Jobs)
“
When Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act in 1935, old age was defined as sixty-five years, yet estimated life expectancy in the United States at the time was sixty-one years for males and sixty-four years for females.62 A senior citizen today, however, can expect to live eighteen to twenty years longer. The downside is that he or she also should expect to die more slowly. The two most common causes of death in 1935 America were respiratory diseases (pneumonia and influenza) and infectious diarrhea, both of which kill rapidly. In contrast, the two most common causes of death in 2007 America were heart disease and cancer (each accounted for about 25 percent of total deaths). Some heart attack victims die within minutes or hours, but most elderly people with heart disease survive for years while coping with complications such as high blood pressure, congestive heart failure, general weakness, and peripheral vascular disease. Many cancer patients also remain alive for several years following their diagnosis because of chemo-therapy, radiation, surgery, and other treatments. In addition, many of the other leading causes of death today are chronic illnesses such as asthma, Alzheimer’s, type 2 diabetes, and kidney disease, and there has been an upsurge in the occurrence of nonfatal but chronic illnesses such as osteoarthritis, gout, dementia, and hearing loss.63 Altogether, the growing prevalence of chronic illness among middle-aged and elderly individuals is contributing to a health-care crisis because the children born during the post–World War II baby boom are now entering old age, and an unprecedented percentage of them are suffering from lingering, disabling, and costly diseases. The term epidemiologists coined for this phenomenon is the “extension of morbidity.
”
”
Daniel E. Lieberman (The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health and Disease)
“
Our sizable group was scattered among three different tables, and because the restaurant was a bit noisy, the kids’ table didn’t hear Alan lead us in the blessing. So Miss Kay went over to their table and led Mia and her cousins in their own prayer, thanking God for the food and asking Him to watch over Mia the next morning. After she finished, she asked the girls if they wanted to add anything. Mia said that she did. They all bowed their heads while Mia prayed for Mrs. Cathy, a dear friend of ours who was recovering from a recent mastectomy and undergoing chemotherapy for stage two breast cancer.
Miss Kay came over to me and Jase with tears in her eyes, recounting what Mia had prayed. “I just assumed she was going to pray for herself, but she prayed for Cathy instead.”
When I told Miss Kay that we pray for Cathy each night at bedtime, Kay said, “Well, I guess Mia thought there was no reason that this night should be any different.”
She also mentioned that she asked Mia if she was nervous about the next day.
“Not really” was Mia’s response.
“But what do you feel?” Miss Kay asked her.
“Nothing. I just don’t feel anything, really.”
I guess I would interpret her response simply as Mia being at peace.
”
”
Missy Robertson (Blessed, Blessed ... Blessed: The Untold Story of Our Family's Fight to Love Hard, Stay Strong, and Keep the Faith When Life Can't Be Fixed)
“
Chemotherapy, the third main prong in cancer treatment after surgery and radiation, came about by similarly unlikely means. Although chemical weapons had been outlawed by international treaty after World War I, several nations still produced them, if only as a precaution in the event that others did likewise. The United States was among the transgressors. For obvious reasons, this was kept secret, but in 1943 a U.S. Navy supply ship, the SS John Harvey, carrying mustard gas bombs as part of its cargo, was caught in a German bombing raid on the Italian port of Bari. The Harvey was blown up, releasing a cloud of mustard gas over a wide area, killing an unknown number of people. Realizing that this was an excellent, if accidental, test of the mustard gas’s efficacy as a killing agent, the navy dispatched a chemical expert, Lieutenant Colonel Stewart Francis Alexander, to study the effects of the mustard gas on the ship’s crew and others nearby. Luckily for posterity, Alexander was an astute and diligent investigator, for he noticed something that might have been overlooked: mustard gas dramatically slowed the creation of white blood cells in those exposed to it. From this, it was realized that some derivative of mustard gas might be useful in treating some cancers. Thus was born chemotherapy.
”
”
Bill Bryson (The Body: A Guide for Occupants)
“
Here is another weird example of the privileging of religion. On 21 February 2006 the United States Supreme Court ruled, in accordance with the Constitution, that a church in New Mexico should be exempt from the law, which everybody else has to obey, against the taking of hallucinogenic drugs. Faithful members of Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao do Vegetal believe that they can understand God only by drinking dimethyltryptamine. Note that it is sufficient that they believe that the drug enhances their understanding. They do not have to produce evidence. Conversely, there is plenty of evidence that cannabis eases the nausea and discomfort of cancer sufferers undergoing chemotherapy. Yet, again in accordance with the Constitution, the Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that all patients who use cannabis for medicinal purposes are vulnerable to federal prosecution (even in the minority of states where such specialist use is legalized). Religion, as ever, is the trump card. Imagine members of an art appreciation society pleading in court they they 'believe' they need a hallucinogenic drug in order to enhance their understanding of Impressionist or Surrealist paintings. Yet, when a church claims an equivalent need, it is backed by the highest court in the land. Such is the power of religion as a talisman.
”
”
Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion)
“
On 21 February 2006 the United States Supreme Court ruled, in accordance with the Constitution, that a church in New Mexico should be exempt from the law, which everybody else has to obey, against the taking of hallucinogenic drugs.8 Faithful members of the Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao do Vegetal believe that they can understand God only by drinking hoasca tea, which contains the illegal hallucinogenic drug dimethyltryptamine. Note that it is sufficient that they believe that the drug enhances their understanding. They do not have to produce evidence. Conversely, there is plenty of evidence that cannabis eases the nausea and discomfort of cancer sufferers undergoing chemotherapy. Yet, again in accordance with the Constitution, the Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that all patients who use cannabis for medicinal purposes are vulnerable to federal prosecution (even in the minority of states where such specialist use is legalized). Religion, as ever, is the trump card. Imagine members of an art appreciation society pleading in court that they ‘believe’ they need a hallucinogenic drug in order to enhance their understanding of Impressionist or Surrealist paintings. Yet, when a church claims an equivalent need, it is backed by the highest court in the land. Such is the power of religion as a talisman.
”
”
Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion)
“
At the outset I must confess that I am no longer very good at telling the difference between good things and bad things. Of course there are many events in human history that can only be labeled as evil, but from the standpoint of inner individual experience the distinction has become blurred for me. Some things start out looking great but wind up terribly, while other things seem bad in the beginning but turn out to be blessings in disguise. I was diagnosed with cancer in 1995, which I thought was a bad thing. But the experience brought me closer to God and to my loved ones than I'd ever been, and that was wonderfully good. The chemotherapy felt awful, but it resulted in a complete cure, which I decided was good. I later found out it may also have caused the heart disease that now has me waiting for a heart transplant. At some point I gave up trying to decide what's ultimately good or bad. I truly do not know....Although not knowing may itself seem like a bad thing, I am convinced it is one of the great gifts of the dark night of the soul. To be immersed in mystery can be very distressing at first, but over time I have found immense relief in it. It takes the pressure off. I no longer have to worry myself to death about what I did right or wrong to cause a good or bad experience-because there really is no way of knowing. I don't have to look for spiritual lessons in every trouble that comes along. There have been many spiritual lessons to be sure, but they've given to me in the course of life; I haven't had to figure out a single one.
”
”
Gerald G. May (The Dark Night of the Soul: A Psychiatrist Explores the Connection Between Darkness and Spiritual Growth)
“
For things to change, somebody somewhere has to start acting
differently. Maybe it’s you, maybe it’s your team.
Picture that person (or people). Each has an emotional Elephant side and a rational Rider side.
You’ve got to reach both. And you’ve also got to clear the way
for them to succeed. In short, you must do three things: → DIRECT the Rider FOLLOW THE BRIGHT SPOTS. Investigate what’s working and clone it. [Jerry Sternin in Vietnam, solutions-focused therapy] SCRIPT THE CRITICAL MOVES. Don’t think big picture, think in terms of specific behaviors. [1% milk, four rules at the Brazilian railroad] POINT TO THE DESTINATION. Change is easier when you know where you’re going and why it’s worth it. [“You’ll be third graders soon,” “No dry holes” at BP] → MOTIVATE the Elephant FIND THE FEELING. Knowing something isn’t enough to cause change. Make people feel something. [Piling gloves on the table, the chemotherapy video game, Robyn Waters’s demos at Target] SHRINK THE CHANGE. Break down the change until it no longer spooks the Elephant. [The 5-Minute Room Rescue, procurement reform] GROW YOUR PEOPLE. Cultivate a sense of identity and instill the growth mindset. [Brasilata’s “inventors,” junior-high math kids’ turnaround] → SHAPE the Path TWEAK THE ENVIRONMENT. When the situation changes, the behavior changes. So change the situation. [Throwing out the phone system at Rackspace, 1-Click ordering, simplifying the online time sheet] BUILD HABITS. When behavior is habitual, it’s “free”—it doesn’t tax the Rider. Look for ways to encourage habits. [Setting “action triggers,” eating two bowls of soup while dieting, using checklists] RALLY THE HERD.
”
”
Chip Heath (Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard)
“
freeze, so she opted for pants with a thick, nubbly sweater that added substance to her frame. As always, her necklace was in place, and she donned a lovely bright cashmere scarf to keep her neck warm. When she stepped back to appraise herself in the mirror, she felt she looked almost as good as she had before chemotherapy started. Collecting her purse, she took a couple more pills—the pain wasn’t as bad as yesterday, but no reason to risk it—and called an Uber. Pulling up to the gallery a few minutes after closing time, she saw Mark through the window, discussing one of her photographs with a couple in their fifties. Mark offered the slightest of waves when Maggie stepped inside and hurried to her office. On her desk was a small stack of mail; she was quickly sorting through it when Mark suddenly tapped on her open door. “Hey, sorry. I thought they’d make a decision before you arrived, but they had a lot of questions.” “And?” “They bought two of your prints.” Amazing, she thought. Early in the life of the gallery, weeks could go by without the sale of even a single print of hers. And while the sales did increase with the growth of her career, the real renown came with her Cancer Videos. Fame did indeed change everything, even if the fame was for a reason she wouldn’t wish upon anyone. Mark walked into the office before suddenly pulling up short. “Wow,” he said. “You look fantastic.” “I’m trying.” “How do you feel?” “I’ve been more tired than usual, so I’ve been sleeping a lot.” “Are you sure you’re still up for this?” She could see the worry in his expression. “It’s Luanne’s gift, so I have to go. And besides, it’ll help me get into the Christmas spirit.
”
”
Nicholas Sparks (The Wish)
“
What you did to us—and to me specifically—was wrong, and you had no right to do that.’” The priest stared unblinkingly into Blanchette’s eyes, waiting but unprepared for what came next. “‘Having said that, it brings me to the real reason I’ve come here. The real reason I’ve come here is to ask you to forgive me for the hatred and resentment that I have felt toward you for the last twenty-five years.’ When I said that, he stood up, and in what I would describe as a demonic voice, he said, ‘Why are you asking me to forgive you?’ And through tears I said, ‘Because the Bible tells me to love my enemies and to pray for those who persecute me.’” Blanchette said Birmingham collapsed as if he’d been punched in the chest. The priest dissolved into tears, and soon Blanchette too was crying. Blanchette began to take his leave but asked Birmingham if he could visit again. The priest explained that he was under tight restrictions at the rectory. He said he had been to a residential treatment center in Connecticut, and he returned there once a month. He was not allowed to leave the grounds except in the company of an adult. Blanchette would not see the priest again until Tuesday, April 18, 1989, just hours before his death. Blanchette found his molester at Symmes Hospital in Arlington and discovered the priest—once robust and 215 pounds—was now an eighty-pound skeleton with skin. Morphine dripped into an IV in his arm. Oxygen was fed by a tube into his nostrils. His hair had been claimed by chemotherapy. The priest sat in a padded chair by his bed. His breathing was labored. “I knelt down next to him and held his hand and began to pray. And as I did, he opened his eyes. I said, ‘Father Birmingham, it’s Tommy Blanchette from Sudbury.’” He greeted Blanchette with a raspy and barely audible, “Hi. How are ya?” “I said, ‘Is it all right if I pray for you?’ And he said, ‘Yes.’ And I began to pray, ‘Dear Father, in the name of Jesus Christ, I ask you to heal Father Birmingham’s body, mind, and soul.’ I put my hand over his heart and said, ‘Father, forgive him all his sins.’” Blanchette helped Birmingham into bed. It was about 10 P.M. He died the next morning.
”
”
The Boston Globe (Betrayal: The Crisis in the Catholic Church: The findings of the investigation that inspired the major motion picture Spotlight)
“
Some years ago I saw a documentary on dying whose main theme was that people die as they lived. That was Jimmy. For five years, since he began undergoing operations for bladder cancer and even after his lung cancer was diagnosed, he continued the activities that he considered important, marching against crackhouses, campaigning against the demolition of the Ford Auditorium, organizing Detroit Summer, making speeches, and writing letters to the editor and articles for the SOSAD newsletter and Northwest Detroiter. In 1992 while he was undergoing the chemotherapy that cleared up his bladder cancer, he helped form the Coalition against Privatization and to Save Our City. The coalition was initiated by activist members of a few AFSCME locals who contacted Carl Edwards and Alice Jennings who in turn contacted us. Jimmy helped write the mission statement that gave the union activists a sense of themselves as not only city workers but citizens of the city and its communities. The coalition’s town meetings and demonstrations were instrumental in persuading the new mayor, Dennis Archer, to come out against privatization, using language from the coalition newsletter to explain his position. At the same time Jimmy was putting out the garbage, keeping our corner at Field and Goethe free of litter and rubbish, mopping the kitchen and bathroom floors, picking cranberries, and keeping up “his” path on Sutton. After he entered the hospice program, which usually means death within six months, and up to a few weeks before his death, Jimmy slowed down a bit, but he was still writing and speaking and organizing. He used to say that he wasn’t going to die until he got ready, and because he was so cheerful and so engaged it was easy to believe him. A few weeks after he went on oxygen we did three movement-building workshops at the SOSAD office for a group of Roger Barfield’s friends who were trying to form a community-action group following a protest demonstration at a neighborhood sandwich shop over the murder of one of their friends. With oxygen tubes in his nostrils and a portable oxygen tank by his side, Jimmy spoke for almost an hour on one of his favorite subjects, the need to “think dialectically, rather than biologically.” Recognizing that this was probably one of Jimmy’s last extended speeches, I had the session videotaped by Ron Scott. At the end of this workshop we asked participants to come to the next session prepared to grapple with three questions: What can we do to make our neighborhoods safe? How can we motivate people to transform? How can we create jobs?
”
”
Grace Lee Boggs (Living for Change: An Autobiography)
“
Fate had dedicated that love’s path would not run smoothly. Katie kept a secret from her husband and can they survive this? She had a lump in her breast. She was terrified it was cancer; her mum had died of it. A month later she got so sick she collapsed and had to be hospitalized. Tests revealed she had inoperable cancer. Surgery was no use nor was chemotherapy or radiography
”
”
Annette J. Dunlea
“
To get the most out of this chapter, first find where you are on this map of the cancer journey: Critical stress points. When you have just been diagnosed with cancer or learned that your cancer has recurred or is not responding to treatment. Treatment preparation. When you are anticipating surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, or molecular target therapies. Side effect management. When you are undergoing treatment and need ways (instead of or in addition to drugs) to manage its side effects. Post-treatment. When you are adjusting to the end of active treatment, usually after the final chemotherapy cycle. This situation can, perhaps surprisingly, prove quite stressful. Remission maintenance. Although definitely good news, remission introduces its own issues, most notably fear of recurrence. Remission is also when you will be most determined to take back your life from cancer.
”
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Keith Block (Life Over Cancer: The Block Center Program for Integrative Cancer Treatment)
“
Big words like cancer and chemotherapy and radiation being tossed around like pinballs, big feelings creeping in and overtaking what was simply joy and peace only days ago. Yet You are here, Lord.
”
”
Guideposts (Daily Guideposts 2018: A Spirit-Lifting Devotional)
“
Guy declined a drink. He told me the chemotherapy had made him lose his taste for alcohol, and he was still pissed off about it.
”
”
Tamara Saviano (Without Getting Killed or Caught: The Life and Music of Guy Clark (John and Robin Dickson Series in Texas Music, sponsored by the Center for Texas Music History, Texas State University))
“
R.’s chemotherapy is going better than expected. Total loss of hair, though. We are praying together for the first time since the early part of our marriage, and I am more filled with love for her than ever. She seems so broken and helpless; but God’s love will give her and both of us strength.
”
”
Douglas Preston (Jennie: A Novel)
“
there were also intellectual reasons to investigate and try to understand his cancer. Steve’s particular kind of tumor is a rare one. According to the National Cancer Institute (NCI), only about one thousand cases a year are discovered in the United States. As a result, research on pancreatic islet cell neuroendocrine carcinomas is not buttressed by the kind of massive database available to doctors studying breast or lung cancer, to cite two more common forms, or even other forms of cancer of the pancreas. (His own oncologist/surgeon admitted to me privately that not enough was known at that time to determine statistically what the best treatment should be—surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, something else, or a combination of treatments.) So Steve’s indecision about what to do was not completely off-base.
”
”
Brent Schlender (Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader)
“
If cancer was a mugger you would at least throw a punch.
What's different?
”
”
Lawrence Wray
“
If you have cancer, The Cancer Survivors Club is looking for new members.
We're waiting for you.
”
”
Lawrence Wray
“
Cancer is a fight to the death.
Either you kill it, or it will kill you.
Get ready to brawl.
”
”
Lawrence Wray
“
We all have two lives.
The second one starts when we realise we only have one.
”
”
Lawrence Wray
“
You have to fight, because if you don't, you let the opponent win, and if your opponent is cancer, the results can be deadly.
”
”
Lawrence Wray
“
Did you notice the smile on a cancer patient's face after the last treatment?
That's the smile you want on your face.
”
”
Lawrence Wray
“
an average of $94,000 during the last year of life with a metastatic breast cancer. Our medical system is excellent at trying to stave off death with $12,000-a-month chemotherapy, $4,000-a-day intensive care, $7,000-an-hour surgery. But, ultimately, death comes, and few are good at knowing when to stop.
”
”
Atul Gawande (Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End)
“
SUSAN BLOCK AND her father had the conversation that we all need to have when the chemotherapy stops working, when we start needing oxygen at home, when we face high-risk surgery, when the liver failure keeps progressing, when we become unable to dress ourselves. I’ve heard Swedish doctors call it a “breakpoint discussion,” a series of conversations to sort out when they need to switch from fighting for time to fighting for the other things that people value—being with family or traveling or enjoying chocolate ice cream.
”
”
Atul Gawande (Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End)
“
twenty-nine-year-old patient she had recently cared for who had an inoperable brain tumor that continued to grow through second-line chemotherapy. The patient elected not to attempt any further chemotherapy, but getting to that decision required hours of discussion, for this was not the decision he had expected to make. First, the oncologist said, she had a discussion with him alone. They reviewed the story of how far he’d come, the options that remained. She was frank. She told him that in her entire career she had never seen third-line chemotherapy produce a significant response in his type of brain tumor. She had looked for experimental therapies, and none were truly promising. And, although she was willing to proceed with chemotherapy, she told him how much strength and time the treatment would take away from him and his family. He did not shut down or rebel. His questions went on for an hour. He asked about this therapy and that therapy. Gradually, he began to ask about what would happen as the tumor got bigger, what symptoms he’d have, what ways they could try to control them, how the end might come. The oncologist next met with the young man together with his family. That discussion didn’t go so well. He had a wife and small children, and at first his wife wasn’t ready to contemplate stopping chemo. But when the oncologist asked the patient to explain in his own words what they’d discussed, she understood. It was the same with his mother, who was a nurse. Meanwhile, his father sat quietly and said nothing the entire time. A few days later, the patient returned to talk to the oncologist. “There should be something. There must be something,” he said. His father had shown him reports of cures on the Internet. He confided how badly his father was taking the news. No patient wants to cause his family pain. According to Block, about two-thirds of patients are willing to undergo therapies they don’t want if that is what their loved ones want.
”
”
Atul Gawande (Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End)
“
The oncologist went to the father’s home to meet with him. He had a sheaf of possible trials and treatments printed from the Internet. She went through them all. She was willing to change her opinion, she told him. But either the treatments were for brain tumors that were very different from his son’s or else he didn’t qualify. None were going to be miraculous. She told the father that he needed to understand: time with his son was limited, and the young man was going to need his father’s help getting through it. The oncologist noted wryly how much easier it would have been for her just to prescribe the chemotherapy. “But that meeting with the father was the turning point,” she said. The patient and the family opted for hospice. They had more than a month together before he died. Later, the father thanked the doctor. That last month, he said, the family simply focused on being together, and it proved to be the most meaningful time they’d ever spent.
”
”
Atul Gawande (Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End)
“
powerful chemotherapy agents enclosed in microscopic nanoparticles are injected intravenously. These circulate with the blood in every tissue and organ in the body, but the chemotherapy drugs are inactive because they are trapped inside the nanoparticles. After eliminating all of the tumor that can be seen on the MR, the surgeon then refocuses the ultrasound to the surrounding brain to activate the nanoparticles, which release their pharmacological payload in the precise area around the tumor where residual microscopic extensions of the tumor have infiltrated. This allows very high concentrations of the drugs to be delivered focally to the brain while minimizing systemic side effects. The remainder of the chemo-laden nanoparticles will be excreted.
”
”
John Grisham (The Tumor)
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The tumor will eventually take Paul’s life. However, focused ultrasound therapy could transform a fatal condition into one that is chronic, but manageable. In contrast to the best current treatment circa 2015, the futuristic ultrasound therapy depicted here circa 2025 could potentially be accomplished on an outpatient basis without multiple days of hospitalization; without surgery and its attendant risks of infection and complications like blood clots and brain damage; without the harmful effects of radiation; and with minimal side effects of chemotherapy due to focused drug delivery. The net result could be a dramatic improvement in the quality and longevity of countless lives, and decreased cost of treatment.
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John Grisham (The Tumor)
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number of chemotherapy drugs have been developed to restore our bodies’ natural defenses, but their use has been limited due to their high toxicity.107 There are, however, a number of compounds distributed widely throughout the plant kingdom—including beans, greens, and berries—that appear to have the same effect naturally.108 For example, dripping green tea on colon, esophageal, or prostate cancer cells has been shown to reactivate genes silenced by the cancer.109
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Michael Greger (How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease)
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An American ship carrying mustard gas off Bari in Italy was bombed by the Germans 1942. It helped develop chemotherapy owing to the effect of the gas on the condition of the soldiers who had liquid cancers (eradication of white blood cells). But
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder)
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Taking all this in was clearly overwhelming to both daughter and father. And toward the end of the conversation, it became rather difficult to explain the principles of chemotherapy in the level of detail I would have wanted had we only more time with patients.
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Pamela N. Munster (Twisting Fate: My Journey with BRCA - from Breast Cancer Doctor to Patient and Back: My Journey with BRCA―from Breast Cancer Doctor to Patient and Back)