The Unwinding of the Miracle - Julie Yip-Williams Page 0,29

make me truly happy. It is in these relationships that I am finding the breathtaking beauty, peace, and divinity I once ascribed only to my solitary wanderings.

11

An Adventure with the Chinese Medicine Man

In early October, a friend whose mother is facing a rare, lethal form of breast cancer strongly recommended that I go see Dr. G.W., an expert in dispensing herbs to treat cancer and other ailments as part of traditional Chinese medicine practices. Initially I was skeptical, in part because my beloved internist is dead-set against herbal supplements—he wrote an entire chapter in a medical textbook about the untold risks associated with taking them. I had also assumed that my oncologist was opposed to traditional Chinese medicine as a form of either alternative or complementary treatment (as most oncologists seem to be), although we’d never discussed the topic specifically. The fear is of course that, in the absence of clinical studies to show otherwise, the herbs might interfere with chemo treatments and have other negative ramifications, resulting in the promotion of cancer growth and additional unpleasant consequences.

But my friend was insistent, and her recommendation was impassioned; so I looked into Dr. G.W. His credentials were impressive—PhD from Harvard some thirty-five years ago, professorships at various prestigious institutions, years of cancer research at Sloan Kettering, and numerous legitimate-sounding papers and presentations on herbal research. Plus, the breast cancer community online raves about Dr. G.W. Breast cancer is his specialty, but according to his website, he does have experience in other cancers, including colon cancer. The clincher, though, was that my friend’s mother’s doctors spoke glowingly of him, and that my own oncologist, while he doesn’t know Dr. G.W., was comfortable with me taking herbal supplements, so long as he approved in advance the herbs being used. The fact that my blood is being tested all the time also provides him (and me) comfort; if the herbs caused negative effects, they would show up in my blood.

More irrationally, I’ve been emboldened by Siddhartha Mukherjee’s The Emperor of All Maladies, a beautiful and brilliant work that chronicles the history of cancer and the work of daring doctors and researchers and their patients who heroically—many said stupidly at the time—risked their professional careers and lives to develop revolutionary drugs to fight off this scourge that has plagued the human race since our beginning. If those brave souls could take such risks with potent, untested chemicals, I could roll the dice with traditional Chinese medicine, which after all has been around for thousands of years and is a part of my noble Chinese heritage.

So I sent Dr. G.W. an email, and he called me. He told me to meet him on the corner of Forty-seventh and Broadway in Astoria, Queens, in front of the Rite Aid. Odd, but okay. For those not from New York, Queens is a borough that no one ventures into unless one lives there. Think of Vince, Eric, Drama, and Turtle of Entourage fame, who escaped the obscurity of Queens for the glamour and glitz of Los Angeles. Think of Carrie, Samantha, and Charlotte of Sex and the City, who cringed in horror at the idea of visiting Miranda in Brooklyn (gasp!); Brooklyn was bad enough for those sophisticated Manhattanites; forget about Queens; Carrie Bradshaw’s treasured Manolo Blahniks would never have touched a sidewalk in Queens. While Brooklyn offers the charm of elegant nineteenth-century brownstones and gorgeous Prospect Park (the outer boroughs’ response to Manhattan’s Central Park), Queens has little to offer in terms of aesthetics, with its streets characterized by squat and square redbrick buildings. I’ve been to Queens only a few times, because my sister lives in Astoria, and I’ve tasted on even fewer occasions the amazing ethnic food that only Queens offers.

The point is that making my way to Queens to meet the Chinese medicine man on some strange street corner was an adventure. My parents (who were visiting from L.A.) insisted on going with me, and they dragged my sister along, too. The four of us stood on the corner of Forty-seventh and Broadway in front of the one-story building that houses a Rite Aid—my brother was the only one missing out on all the fun. I called Dr. G.W. and told him I had arrived at our designated meeting spot; he said he would be there in five minutes. My parents kept asking me, “Aren’t we going to his office? Why are we standing here?” I couldn’t answer their questions, as I was starting