Living past Cancer
Few things can strike one harder and deeper than the thought of death. One is knowing when ones own time is up. Sometimes it can be such a depressing thought, a poison, that it turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy. This is a sad scenario that many cancer patients have to face. When a doctor comes to you and tells you that you have cancer and an expected amount of time to live. So now what?
Cancer is known through out the world as a disease that claims thousand, its mere name carries fear with it. And when conventional medicine has failed you and regular procedures have little to nothing to offer, what do you turn to, who do you turn to? Do you take your doctor’s advice and go on a vacation and enjoy your last mediocre days, in despair? But if cancer is so widely known, and there are so many that have survived it despite the odds, wouldn’t it make sense to think that the answer is out there. Forget the vacation, its time to find a solution.
As I said depression is poison, and accepting that your going to die turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy. You have to tackle your problems with a smile, a positive attitude, and know that there is always a solution. This is what one has to admire about James Rhio O’Connor and people like him. O’Connor was a man who at 61 was diagnose with Mesothelioma. Now if you don’t know what Mesothelioma is, I don’t blame you. There are so many kinds of Cancer that knowing every type for the average person is silly. Mesothelioma is a type of cancer that is contracted by inhaling asbestos, a mineral that was widely use before its side effects were noticed, and is still used to this day but not as extensible. The mineral’s properties made it popular to use in home’s insulation, automobiles parts, paint, and so on; if inhaled, one is at risk for developing Mesothelioma but not for a couple decades, which makes it so hard to know if your exposed. Expected time to live after it is diagnosed is about two to four years and not to many make it past that. O’Connor lived eight years after being diagnosed and given only a year to live. But the way O’Connor did it is just so amazing and delightfully simple that you might ask your self, “why haven’t I done that”?
O’Connor sat down and certainly did his homework. For hours he spent looking up…looking down, looking left and right for research that could be useful to him. He talked to medical professionals, as well as those who had once been plagued with this illness and found a way to overcome it. He looked at conventional medicine like chemotherapy and surgery as well as some methods that aren’t so well know and some might think are “out there”. And using the most powerful tool in his arsenal, his library card, he investigated and research leads for a solution, which as everyone who has been reading so far knows, there is always a solution. O’Connor believed that educating once self is very important and he definitely made an example of him self in that aspect. In fact he wrote a book where he placed the essential parts of his research, all of it, in just one place for others who are currently in the same shoes as he was, and are following his steps using there most valuable tool, their library card.
I got to admit, O’Connor is a really good story that shows the value of running down a list of leads and researching them systematically till narrowing down on a solution or solutions. If anyone of us was ever diagnosed with an illness like that or one similar, would we keep calm like O’Connor? Surprisingly I think many of us would. And the reason for that is amusing but true. You see many of us haven’t really contemplated death, and a doctor would be telling us that we’re dead, but we’re obviously alive? Are we dead walking; Zombie, I think not. So two weeks have gone by, the news has finally settled in, what would any one of us do? I know I would be looking up how to deal with the illness if I hadn’t done it already. First step is to go to our general doctor at our closest hospital, like western culture has taught us to, preferably an Oncologist, a doctor that specializes with cancer. But if like O’Connor Chemotherapy and Radiation can’t do much more than make us feel worse than we do, and surgery isn’t an option due to the location and type of the cancer, well then our modern medicine has failed us. It’s sad but western medicine is very poor when it comes to chronic illnesses, maybe that’s why they call them chronic huh? Don’t get me wrong, doctors are amazing when it comes to acute problems like trauma. But because doctors focus on the effects and not the causes, this side of medicine isn’t so good.
We’ve gone to the hospital so that covers what we would turn to, but that wasn’t very helpful, so now “who” would we turn to? O’Connor in his research found that a very important thing to have is a positive attitude. If we tell the situation to our family and friends would they keep a positive attitude around you, or would they show nothing but sympathy to your inevitable demise? We don’t want negative sympathy, and any kind of sympathy is negative. The best thing to do would probably be to tell only a select few, those who you know you can trust and will support you with positive advise and put you back in your senses if ever you start to lose hope.
These people you choose will most likely tell you about stories they have heard —in an effort to motivate you— about people who cured them selves from these illnesses by changing their life style, something they started eating, some activity they took up. With nothing to lose, hey why not give these crazy stories a chance. In no time, with the help of your trusty library card, you’ll find out that it’s all about nutrition, and lets be honest; the western world isn’t the best example of good nutrition.
While the very best of nutrition exist in America, it is not so publicly available or promoted. Not to mention the bill could get a little higher. Can’t get discourage though, chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery will cost you thousands more and they will most likely leave you in a debilitated state that you can’t work, enjoy your time, or live for that matter. After a week or more laying in bed unable to get up or work, that surgery might seem even more expensive; and people can last months recuperating. Using the internet along with a clinical professional, one can easily research the proper regiment of vitamins that you need to detoxify and strengthen one’s self. “Let food be the medicine and medicine be the food,” Hypocrites.
Hypocrites has among others, another interesting quote “If what we eat nourishes the body, than what we think nourishes the mind.” This is why I say that one needs a smile, a positive attitude, and know that the solution is out there. A smile will immediately change our mood to a positive one; try it right now you’ll see. Concentrating with that positive attitude will make us more productive; isn’t it getting easier to read? And once productive we’ll find the solution we’re looking for in no time. Not the solution we believe that exist but the solution we know that exists. After all who hasn’t heard of the man who cured his cancer by eating onions and garlic like apples, or the woman that laughed her way by renting comedy movies and dancing her heart out till all traces of cancer disappeared.
By: Alvarado, Jesse Hans
