Luanne Austin says chemotherapy is not all it's cracked up to be. She doesn't mean it's cracked up to be something really great but is far from such a thing. She means it's cracked up to be something pretty horrible but is really not all that bad.

Austin says the day her doctor announced she would receive chemotherapy was almost as bad as the day she learned she had breast cancer. That's because she had heard nothing but bad things about the treatment. She expected to be laying in bed with her life in the balance -- nauseated, vomiting, sick -- as the "cure" killed her.

All expectations aside, Austin decided to tackle chemotherapy with a positive attitude. This may seem a daunting task -- turning a dreaded chemotherapy protocol into a not-so-bad experience -- but Austin mastered the task. And here are seven of her positive thoughts about a treatment that is not all it's cracked up to be.

• Austin talked to people who had traveled journeys similar to hers. What she learned is that many women continued working through treatment. Some suffered very few side effects. One woman even told Austin her experience was super. Austin was inspired by the positive women she tracked down. And now she inspires others.
  

• Austin did some reading. She learned that chemotherapy drugs target quickly-dividing cells, like cancer cells, red and white blood cells, blood platelets, and digestive tract cells. Learning about the process helped her realize chemotherapy was intended to make her well, not make her suffer.

• Austin learned how to support her body through treatment. She came to understand that the best chance of surviving breast cancer comes from conventional medicine -- surgery, chemotherapy, radiation -- but that alternative treatments can complement the traditional approach. She recommends the book Breast Cancer: Beyond Convention and considers her pursuit of a healthy diet, exercise, supplements, and a good night's sleep some of her most helpful chemotherapy add-ons.

• When Austin felt weak, tired, and just plain zoned out, she retreated to her bed with a good book and a cup of tea. Instead of considering it a setback, she called this downtime a good excuse to spend hours reading.

• Austin found relief from her nurses. They were terrific, she recalls, and professional and friendly and respectful too. Getting to know her medical crew -- and receiving hugs from them at the end of her treatment -- confirmed chemotherapy has some good points.

• For Austin, God -- who carried her through her whole journey -- was instrumental in her positive outlook. She felt lifted up and carried, she says.

• And then there's love -- pure and simple love from her husband and family members -- that allows her to conclude that chemotherapy is not so bad. "I'd have to say chemotherapy hasn't been all that bad," she says. "Not bad at all."
  

When I received radiation after my lumpectomy I had to go every weekday for around six weeks. That was five years ago. These days researchers are talking about a new way to receive radiation treatments that are much shorter in duration.

Partial breast irradiation is a new option available to women but is still in the experimental stages. The new technique gives radiation only to the area of the breast where the cancer was removed. It would be given twice a day over a period of five days. A catheter, a small, flexible tube used to deliver the radiation treatment, may be in for a total of seven to ten days.

Whole breast radiation is now the standard of care and is given to the entire breast and not just the area where the cancer was removed. Past studies have show this method to be effective in keeping breast cancer from returning after a lumpectomy.

If you are interested in learning more about partial breast radiation, speak with your physician about participating in a clinical trial.

More evidence shows that dose-dense chemotherapy is better than conventional treatment in early breast cancer. The results were presented at the 2006 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS).

Chemotherapy for breast cancer given at shorter intervals between doses can increase survival rates. The researchers want to keep evaluating this method of treatment to see if there are any long term side effects.

A Phase III trial conducted in Germany studied 1284 patients under the age of 65 who had at least four lymph nodes containing metastatic cancer. Patients were assigned to receive either dose-dense chemotherapy or conventional treatment.

At five years the relapse-free survival was 70 percent in the dose-dense arm, compared with 62 percent in the conventional-dose arm. Patients did seem to have a lower quality of life with the dose-dense method of treatment but recovered after a few months.

Researchers concluded that updated results continue to demonstrate better efficacy with dose-dense chemotherapy than with conventional therapy in early breast cancer.

Beverly called Dr. Jeremy Geffen in a state of panic. She had just been diagnosed with breast cancer that had spread to her lymph nodes, just had her breasts removed, and was terrified of her recent diagnosis -- high grade infiltrating ductal carcinoma.

Beverly, age 44, was told by her doctor that she would need chemotherapy and radiation. She had heard horrible stories about chemotherapy. And having never been sick a day in her life, she was scared. So when a friend told her about a caring doctor she heard speak at a conference, Beverly knew she had to locate him. She tracked down his phone number, picked up the phone, dialed, got Dr. Geffen on the phone, and asked him to help. He did.

Beverly was a complete stranger to Dr. Geffen, author of The Journey Through Cancer: Healing and Transforming the Whole Person. Yet she was like so many people he knew -- people with cancer, confronted with the greatest challenges of their lives, seeking more than just physical remedies, grasping for someone who really cares.

Dr. Geffen received calls like Beverly's every day. And the number of calls seemed to increase with time. It's no wonder really. Cancer is a growing presence -- and more and more people like Beverly are confronting the disease. More and more people like Beverly are seeking more than just science to cure their ailments. And in an effort to harness a little compassion in their lives, patients are reaching for alternative methods of healing -- for their minds and hearts and spirits. Yet few disclose to their doctors their secret missions for fear they will be dismissed.

Beverly knew of Dr. Geffen's belief in holistic healing, his desire to treat the whole person and not just the organs and tissues and cells. So when she asked for his guidance on what treatment protocol to follow -- conventional, alternative, or complementary -- she was a bit surprised at his response.

Dr. Geffen told Beverly that conventional medicine was her best line of defense. Science tells us these methods work -- and abandoning them could be tragic. Dr. Geffen told Beverly that chemotherapy and radiation, when used skillfully and sensibly, can be truly beneficial. But he also suggested she pursue complementary therapies related to diet, nutrition, exercise, and stress relief.

Dr. Geffen believes in balance. And he teaches through his Seven Levels of Healing how we all can achieve balance when considering how to scientifically and emotionally heal our bodies.

Dr. Geffen will detail throughout the chapters of his book how Beverly represents all the strengths and vulnerabilities of the contemporary cancer patient, how Beverly is every one of us.

To read previous posts on the same topic, visit:
The Journey Through Cancer: What Is The Purpose Of Medicine
The Journey Through Cancer: Introduction
Sunday Seven: Seven Levels of Healing on Cancer Journey

Stay tuned for:
The Journey Through Cancer: State-Of-The-Art Medical Care

My own oncologist did it just two days ago. He checked in on my mental health, asked how I was surviving, and eased my fear of cancer recurrence and possible death. He reached beyond the medical scope of our relationship -- literally. He placed a hand on my shoulder. He offered me a hug. He cared.

Yet many doctors refrain from reaching too far into the lives of the patients they treat. They stay at a distance. They focus on merely replacing illness with health. This is, after all, the purpose of medicine -- to fix people.

Dr. Jeremy Geffen, author of The Journey Through Cancer: Healing and Transforming the Whole Person, shares in his book that "at present, doctors focus primarily on the physical characteristics of their patients -- bones and organs, tissue samples, test results, height, weight, and age. Yet in each of us, there is a rich mental, emotional, and spiritual reality that influences, even directs the course of our lives."

Conventional medicine responds to cancer patients with surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, and other treatment protocols to essentially get rid of the cancer. Physical signs, symptoms, and responses are carefully monitored -- while other areas of patients' lives receive little attention.

A whole component of true medical care is missing -- as doctors may feel unprepared to address emotional issues, and time restraints allow for limited interaction between doctor and patient.

Geffen believes the ultimate purpose of medicine is to help all beings "experience unbounded love, joy, and inner peace, and to know this is the essence of who we truly are." This purpose, he believes, deserves as much attention as the purpose of treating symptoms and curing disease.

And so Geffen created a program based on his Seven Levels of Healing -- a program that includes both the relative and ultimate purposes of medicine, both the doing and the being.

Level One: Education and Information -- provides basic information about cancer and treatment options and encourages patients to actively participate in and obtain benefit from their care.

Level Two: Connection with Others -- explores the importance of reaching out to others for comfort and support on the journey through cancer.

Level Three: The Body as Garden -- invites patients and family members to see the human body as growing and evolving, as a complex garden rather than a machine. This level touches on good nutrition, exercise, massage, acupuncture, and a variety of complementary and alternative approaches to healing.

Level Four: Emotional Healing -- enters the realm of the human heart, shedding light on fear, pain, anger, self-love, and forgiveness.

Level Five: The Nature of Mind -- examines how life with cancer is influenced by our thoughts, beliefs, and the meanings we give events.

Level Six: Life Assessment -- delves into aspirations, goals, and purposes of our lives.

Level Seven: The Nature of Spirit -- embraces the spiritual aspects of the healing process.

As a physician, Geffen aims to bring his vision of medicine and healing to cancer patients everywhere. And he uses his book as an instrument of communication -- so readers can participate in his vision, so they can learn to settle for nothing less than medical care that centers on the whole person. And not just the parts.

To read previous posts on the same topic, visit:
The Journey Through Cancer: Introduction
Sunday Seven: Seven Levels of Healing on Cancer Journey

Stay tuned for:
The Journey Through Cancer: Beverly Is Every One Of Us

I have made on-line visits to Wikipedia many times -- mostly for information on cancer. And what I've found are endless resources, thoroughly-covered topics, and material that is easy to read and easy to understand. Wikipedia, a free on-line encyclopedia -- where readers can participate in editing and changing content -- offers information on just about any topic you can imagine. And here are seven stops you might make in pursuit of cancer-related material.

In the moment of despair, the cliche time heals all wounds may seem anything but comforting. But that's because it's true. It takes time to heal and we are not in the right frame of mind just as something unfortunate has happened to accept -- or believe -- this advice that might come flowing from a well-wisher's lips. It's popular wisdom. It's commonly offered as comfort. It's easy to spit out. And while our wounds do not exactly fade with the passage of time, we are able to put a more positive spin on them. But it's tough to appreciate this until the unfortunate moment is long gone.

According to a recent study -- summarized in the September 2006 Ladies Home Journal magazine -- memories of distressing events, like the death of a loved one, don't go away but they do gradually get colored by more hopeful emotions. As time passes, we tend to remember strongly emotional experiences as positive even if they were once harrowing. "People are resilient," says one researcher. "We come to terms with our experiences in as positive a way as we can." So we may eventually see the death of a friend as something that made us stronger, something that reminds us to treasure our friendships. Our ability to find such meaning in the saddest of times helps transform it into a valuable experience -- and not just a sad one.

And this is exactly how I feel about having had cancer. No one could have convinced me at the time of my diagnosis that time would heal my wounds. I wasn't even sure how much time I had left on this planet. I was panic-stricken and frightened and tended to defeat conventional wisdom. But now that two years worth of time has passed me by and I am pretty certain I will continue surviving for a long time, I realize time is responsible for my positive outlook. Time did not completely heal my wounds -- I still have days when my wounds are raw -- but it surely bandaged them. And so I do believe time heals all wounds -- in a way -- and I am thankful for each moment of time I have to marvel at this truth.

The National Institutes of Health National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), established to explore complementary and alternative healing practices in the context of rigorous science; to integrate scientifically proven CAM practices into conventional medicine; to train CAM researchers; and disseminate authoritative information to the public and professionals -- offers these definitions for alternative, complementary and integrative therapy.

Alternative therapy is used in place of conventional western medicine such as special diets to treat cancer instead of undergoing surgery, radiation, or chemotherapy recommended by a conventional doctor.

Complementary medicine is used together with conventional medicine such as using aromatherapy to help lessen a patient's discomfort following surgery.

Integrative medicine combines both mainstream western medical treatment and CAM therapies for which there is known high-quality scientific evidence of safety and effectiveness.

Based on the 2002 edition of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Center for Health Statistics report, in the US, up to 62 percent of adults use some form of CAM. Although the survey indicated that people who use CAM come from all backgrounds -- according to the survey -- some people more likely than others to use CAM are women, those with higher educational levels, people who have been hospitalized in the past year, and former smokers when compared with current smokers or those who have never smoked.

Research has proven some CAM therapies to be valid, while finding others useless, and research continues. NCCAM offers information on research, clinical trials, highlights and alerts, health topic fact sheets, and the CAM Online Continuing Education Series, presented in eight chapters, for health care providers and the public to learn more about CAM.

Diana Dyer was diagnosed with neuroblastoma, a childhood cancer, when she was six months old. She was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 34. She was diagnosed with a second breast cancer ten years after the first. Each cancer was treated by conventional medicine and included combinations of surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. But because her cancer kept returning, Diana realized that for her, something other then treatment was necessary to sustain her through a long life. So she considered a healthy recipe for living -- a blend of traditional medicine and alternative methods too -- and she implemented a holistic approach to healing into her personal world. She has not had a recurrence since 1995 -- and she credits this to the changes she's made in her life. She has tipped the scales in her favor, she believes, and she shares her approach with others who want to begin a journey toward recovery and healing after cancer.

Abraham Starchild Cherrix was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma last summer and went through three months of chemotherapy. Early this year, tests showed the chemotherapy had not achieved the goal of cancer remission and his doctors recommended more chemotherapy and radiation. Since being diagnosed with cancer, Cherrix has done his research, and when the doctors told him they would like him to undergo additional chemotherapy and radiation, he said thanks but no thanks. He has lost faith in conventional medicine to help him, and he is concerned about the poisonous damage chemotherapy and radiation will do to his body. He is not alone.

Cherrix wants to try alternative therapies now to combat a cancer that chemotherapy has failed to defeat. He is interested in a bible-based diet, and the Hoxsey formula involving herbs and nutrition. He has contacted the Association for Research and Enlightenment, a center founded by Christian psychic Edgar Cayce and a clinic in Tijuana, Mexico. Like I said, he is not alone. The interest and use of alternative therapies is a choice some cancer patients make to treat their cancer. Ultimately it is up to the cancer patient how the cancer is treated. So what is the big deal that Cherrix has chosen this route? He is 15 years-old. So when he made his intentions clear, with the support of his parents, child services and the court stepped in and legally ordered him to begin chemotherapy and radiation. His parents have been threatened with losing custody of their son.

It's a tough call. There is a cancer patient who does not believe in a treatment he is being forced to undergo -- and having faith in your doctors and treatment can affect how well a treatment works -- and life and death decisions and courses of action that often do not come with a second chance. If Cherrix were an adult, none of this would be a legal issue. Do you think the courts have a right to intervene?

Mike Adams starts Lying with statistics: How conventional medicine confuses the public by posing this question, "Which drug would you rather take? One that reduces your risk of cancer by 50 percent, or another drug that only eliminates cancer in one out of 100 people?" He believes most people would choose the drug that reduces the risk by half.

But both of these choices refer to the same drug and the same outcome. Curious? Here's how Adams explains it. Let's say a new breast cancer drug is being tested and there are 100 women in the clinical trial. At the beginning of the trial, two women are expected to get breast cancer. The other 98 women are not even expected to get breast cancer. Just two of them. At the end of the trial, only one woman gets breast cancer. If you interpret the results of this trial by absolute risk, then the reduction of breast cancer is one woman out of 100. However, if you interpret the results by relative risk -- that out of two women only one got breast cancer -- then the reduction of breast cancer with the new breast cancer drug being tested is an incredible 50 percent.

Remember, at the beginning of the trial, the researchers hypothesized that two women would get breast cancer and since only one did get breast cancer -- one out of two equals 50 percent. Now, if you are a pharmaceutical company who wants to extol the virtues of this new experimental drug, which risk -- absolute or relative -- would you use? Especially if you are trying to grab the interest and support of financial backers and the public? Relative -- of course. It sounds better. And it's true.

However, if you want to discredit a drug or therapy, you would use absolute risk. You would refer to the therapy in a framework of absolute risk. The one out of 100 statistical outcome, as in, it doesn't work very well -- only one out of 100 showed benefit from use. Adams points out this happens all the time when conventional medicine refers to claims made by alternative therapies in say, herbal remedies. And it's true. Nothing about absolute or relative risk is untrue but each can give a vastly different impression of what is true. Before you read another health news headline about another research study or new drug, go read his commentary in its entirety. It will make you pause -- it will make you think twice -- it will prompt you to ask, "what are we talking here -- absolute or relative risk?"

In December, a woman asked Dr. Weil if turmeric can prevent breast cancer. Dr. Weil cited research done by M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston that reported curcumin, an active component in turmeric, does seem to have properties in preventing breast cancer. That study focused on the spread of breast cancer to the lungs. Using mice, the researchers discovered curcumin prevented the spread of breast cancer to the lungs in 50 percent of the mice; when Taxol was used in combination with curcumin, the prevention went up to almost 80 percent. In conclusion, the suggestion was made that women with a family history of breast cancer should be advised to include curcumin in their diet.

During Dr. Weil's discussion on curcumin, he states that people whose diets are rich in turmeric have lower rates of breast cancer as well as prostate, lung and colon cancers. Curcumin seems to be a cancer prevention spice for cancer. I became a fan of Dr. Weil when he first became a public celebrity and authority on health and nutrition because of his traditional and modern approach to medicine. In his expert opinion, he argues that isolating a single compound limits the amount of knowledge we can learn from the study of food, herbs and spices because the synergy of all active elements are missed in the equation. In the case of curcumin, he says, "I wish researchers would get off the reductionistic bandwagon and come around to appreciate the inherent complexity of nature. Whole turmeric extracts are the way to go; I always recommend them to patients rather than products containing isolated curcumin." The whole will always be stronger than its parts, and it is the interconnection of all parts that give the truest definition to the whole.