Cancer Journal

 There is a blog  dealing with aging that I used to follow closely.  When I got my cancer diagnosis, it became a little bit of a dark joke and my interest flagged.  More recently, since I've been doing well, my interest has resumed. It is "Aging Matters" by Josh Mitteldorf (https://joshmitteldorf.scienceblog.com/). Perhaps a better title for it would be "How not to Age". The standard theory which he believes to be all wrong is that all living things evolve so as to stay alive for as long as they can but that wear and tear with the passage of time inevitably drag those living things down into decline and death.  He says that instead, members of a population are genetically programed for the well being of the population, not the individual, and that this requires death for the members that have been around long enough.  Without death, overpopulation will create unsustainable demands on food and the other resources necessary for the population's well-being....

 I have some things to say about Ross Douthat's wish that there was a viable middle ground between standard medicine and alternate treatments--a way of perhaps blending the two to the benefit of both kinds of treatments.  I'm heartily with him on that but it's only in an alternate world that that happens.   I think of an example from the history of Christianity and astronomy that illustrates the point for me.  I don't know how helpful it will be for you.  Copernicus proposed that the Earth revolved around the Sun and the Catholic Church had no problem with that.  100 years later Galileo said the same thing and he was put on trial, convicted of doctrinal error and confined to his residence for the rest of his life.  What happened in those 100 years?  I'll tell you.  There was a Reformation with the reformers saying that the only authority for spiritual matters was the Bible, not whatever Catholic Church wanted to tack on to Christianity....

 I want to tell you about my friend, Maria.  I've referred to her before but not by name.  She's the woman that gets Vitamin C infusions the same time I do.  I've spoken of her as the women with whom I have a good rapport.  We yack and yack.  She was diagnosed with Stage IV esophageal cancer a few years ago.  It had been caught so late and was so unresponsive to standard treatment that her doctors gave up on her.  She was told that she did not have many months left to live and that she should get her things in order. Maria was in her mid-fifties with an adolescent son and a husband with whom she had recently married (I may have that part of the story wrong.  They may have just been living together and got married after the diagnosis.  Doesn't make much difference.)   Anyway, too early to be dying of cancer.  She went passive,  overwhelmed by the news.  Her first husband, the father of the adolescent, had died of ...

 I promised more on Ross Douthat.  I'll start from an odd point.  When I first got saved, I had the very definite idea that I must not sit off to the side and watch what was going on.  I had to be sure to be doing what was going on.  Since, at the time, we were full flower Charismatic at our church, that meant that I did some pretty bizarre stuff.  Praying quite loudly, singing spontaneous melodies in tongues meaning that I sang words I had not formed in my mind through any natural process and whose meaning I did not know. I would go forward whenever there was some kind of prayer request.  Other stuff too.  My natural tendency would have been to sit back and make a critical assessment.  I was caused to know that if I were to do that, I would be drinking poison.  I would have gone outsider when what I needed to do was be inside.  I always had been sort of an outsider anyway and I really was with these folks.  I was a professiona...

 I like the New York Times columnist, Ross Douthat a lot.  He's a conservative but palatable for New York Times readers and so belongs to the lamentably rare breed of conservatives who make sense.  He has had Lyme Disease which was not diagnosed and did not respond to standard treatment.  He suffered from terrible symptoms for months, extending into years, heart attack symptoms that were not heart attacks and more.  He has been writing a series of columns on the experience recently, adapted from a book that will soon be coming out.  His most recent column dealt with alternative medicine and the role it had in his personal treatment.   What he did sort of shares some features with my own alternate/complimentary treatment program (calling it a program makes it sound more organized than it really is but I'll call it a program).  My sister suggested I write about his most recent column which I thought was a good idea.  I thought to summarize...

 One final thing I do to fight cancer,  My last haircut was around Christmas, 2020.  I've gone "bushy headed" as I heard that someone has called me.  I'm following what's called the "Sampson Method", a European Cancer Therapy.       Just kidding.  Not about the long hair but its effect on cancer ( Although, if you google "Sampson" and "Cancer" together you get 6,600,000 hits so there might be something there). I got a lot of hair on my head.  I feel the back of my head and it feels like luxuriant abundance.  Feels good. No luxuriant abundance on the top of my head but that's OK.  Fact is, I got too much hair--an unusual complaint for a man my age.   Why don't I get it cut?  I could and I may.  Right now I feel like the male version of the little old lady wearing a purple dress with a pink scarf and a red beret.  Her personality is in full bloom if not her good judgement. She figures, "I can so 'phuff' I...

 A month or so ago, I was driving from the place I have fitness training up to where I have Vitamin C infusion.  I had the thought: "I have never felt this good in my life."  I thought that was really something, what with being a 72 year old stage IV cancer patient.  Perhaps you respond, "Oh, come on.  That has to be an exaggeration."  I say, " Maybe a little, although I don't know.  I really felt (and feel) good. If I felt better when I was three years old, it was an unreflective feeling.  When I was 15 or even 20, there was growing up angst that would have prevented me from saying, 'I've never felt...'" Let me tell you what I do that causes me to feel so good.  I walk briskly with my niece for a mile plus first thing every morning with our dogs.   I do fitness training twice a week and feel very good afterwards as was the case when I had that thought.  I feel awful while I do it, but such a nice sense of relaxed well being on...