friend X—or maybe more truthfully I vowed to X—“I will never be one of those people; I will never go to Mexico to drink sludge, no matter what happens.” My friend, this brilliant man with a razor-sharp intellect, replied, “I think I would be one of those people.” I was appalled, horrified, perplexed, and also intrigued by his response. Why indeed would someone so smart do something so dumb? X doesn’t have cancer. Even so, in the cancer world, I’ve seen quite a bit of that—sick people doing crazy things in order to save themselves, and some of them I would say are quite mentally competent and even smart under other circumstances. (Consider, as an example of someone brilliant robbed of rationality, Steve Jobs, who rejected conventional treatments in favor of alternative treatments at a time when his pancreatic cancer was very treatable; even though he subsequently underwent surgery and other traditional therapies, many consider his initial rejection of conventional care to have shortened his life.)
Something about cancer—in which the machine of our very existence, cellular reproduction, turns against us—makes us humans crazed. It is easy to see how that creates within our flawed selves irrationality, fanaticism, and desperation.
Should desperate people be commended for their bravery, for fighting against all odds, for leaving no stone unturned, for “raging against the dying of the light” until their absolute last breath, despite the debilitating consequences of treatment, for staying put in the face of a destructive hurricane and saying a symbolic “fuck you” to the cruel fates? Should I praise them in the same way I praise a woman who chooses to endure the pain of childbirth without an epidural—I screamed for an epidural the moment my contractions started—or a man who survives at sea with little food and water? Early on in my cancer journey, I vowed that I would be one of them—that I would forever rage against the dying of the light. Back then, maybe I would have considered seeking chemotherapy treatment days before my death and even drinking sludge. No longer.
I’ve had my moments of irrationality, fanaticism, and desperation, too, of course. Moments that I now view with some degree of embarrassment. I’ve paid a total of eighteen hundred dollars to see the famed integrative doctor Raymond Chang. I’ve spent thousands of dollars on supplements, herbs, and cannabis, based on Dr. Chang’s recommendations or on the Internet success story du jour, or whatever link someone shared on some forum. Other than vitamin D, CoQ10, and Cimetidine, all of the supplements now sit on my kitchen counter untouched. (I never seriously entertained Dr. Chang’s more drastic treatment proposals, such as hyperthermia and immunotherapy-like treatments available only in other countries.) At my last infusion, I told Dr. A.C. (who has always been okay with me taking supplements), that I’ve stopped taking all the things Dr. Chang recommended because ultimately I just don’t believe, and I can’t do something I don’t believe in. Dr. A.C. responded, “You don’t believe because at heart you are a scientist.” I think that was the greatest compliment Dr. A.C. could have paid me. I’ve always been skeptical of alternative treatments, but skepticism turned to disbelief when after my recurrence Dr. Chang recommended scorpion venom at six hundred dollars for a month’s supply. I went home and watched the Nightline story about scorpion venom, which basically called it snake oil.
The hope industrial complex won’t get another dime out of me. Or rather, the industrial complex that preys on the hopeful will get no more support from me.
Many advocates of alternative treatments make the common argument that anything is worth trying so long as no harm is done. This is the same basis upon which my own oncologist acquiesces to his patients doing alternative treatments—that so long as the treatments do not negatively impact organ function, he will allow them. He is skeptical, of course, but I suspect he recognizes that many of his patients crave control over their destinies (ha!) and must feel as if they are leaving no option unexplored. Even though he and other scientifically minded people understand that control is an illusion, I suppose that illusion can be important to the preservation of a dying patient’s sanity.
But a beating heart alone does not make for a life. So what was that old man searching for on that stretcher, and what would X want if he ever got to that point? I wonder. A miracle? A cure? More time? To prove his