ManicDDaily

Trying to regroup a bit today, not to think too much about sad things, after the death of a dear friend.  Cancer does keep popping to the brain, though in a curiously disengaged way.  Not so much why people get it – that one’s a bit too scary.  As an inhabitant of New York City who’s ingested all kinds of particulate matter, and still makes decisions that are not proactively anti-carcinogenic, I prefer not to think of it.

What comes to mind more easily is how people fight cancer, and why?

I, thankfully, have not had a personal reason to study these issues minutely, but I have to confess to some general bias against Western medicine.  It’s always seemed to me to specialize in cannons;  approaches to illness that involve heavy artillery used on a landscape (the body) which is nuanced and delicate (despite all those limbs and outgrowths), a landscape which one would just as soon save more rather than less of.   I am skeptical enough that the concept of a “surgical strike” seems hardly more precise to me when conducted by people in masks around an operating table than by pilots over a tableau of largely civilian dwellings.

I don’t mean to say that modern surgeons aren’t capable of precision (the whole skill seems to me to be absolutely amazing).  But I do think that the medical profession sometimes underrates the complications attending the procedures, the truly difficult healing processes and side effects.  The body is so complex and self-regulating;  it doesn’t particularly like to be messed with (even when its systems are out of whack.)

Pharmaceutical applications seem even less precise.  Dealing with my father’s diabetes has been an interesting lesson in this, his blood-sugar-lowing medication having been the prime cause of every emergency room visit and hospitalization over the last few years.

So complicated.  Does early detection of cancers save lives, or does it just extend the counting period?  How much good do chemotherapy and radiation do against aggressive cancers?  Does this good outweigh their stress on the healthy parts of the body, the body’s own defense mechanisms?  Or would the healthy parts of the body be weakened even faster by the cancer itself? Does the fight for extra time actually give extra time or just wear the patient out?

Of course, each case is different;  results are not fully knowable in advance.  And though experts seem to be getting better at identifying really aggressive cancers, those marked by a terrible predictability,  they have to allow for the slim chance; some possibility of unpredictability, some miraculous outcome.   Of course, it’s difficult to force the miraculous, but, as modern Americans – proud fighters, believers in belief itself, and above all, dutiful family members  – we cling to these slim chances, feel bound to try for them.

A difficult arena.

This entry was posted on July 24, 2010 at 12:15 pm and is filed under Vicissitudes of Life. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: aggressive cancers, belief in belief and miracles in fighting cancer, cancer, chemotherapy, doubts about western Medicine, drawing of cannon and surgeon, fighting cancer, manicddaily, Manicddaily pencil drawing, meaning of early detection, surgical strikes in surgery and war, thoughts re cancer treatments