As a cancer support professional – and as a cancer survivor – I won’t tell you or advise you on the best way to treat or cure cancer.
People want me to. People want me to – sometimes really badly – I think just so they can argue with me about it. This weekend, someone approached me at a Wellness Fair and asked me what treatment options I espouse and recommend. I told him it’s not my area – I do not endorse or recommend any particular treatment over another one, or try to advise or guide people towards or away from any one treatment option. I support people in whatever option they choose based on the information, values and beliefs they have.
He said he didn’t believe in chemotherapy. He told me only 5% of people who have chemotherapy survive 5 years past that treatment.
I told him that makes me about 2.15 x dead then.
He told me it must’ve been because I changed my diet. I told him I didn’t change my diet. He then stated it must’ve been because I did a “detox” after the chemo. I said I didn’t do a detox, or anything else to de my tox for that matter. And yet, here I am, 10 years later. He became quite angry. Clearly I was challenging his beliefs about chemotherapy, but not through anything I said. He was angry because I had the audacity to be sitting here talking to him 10 years after chemotherapy when in his mind I should be dead.
You’d have thought he would have been pleased I didn’t die within five years of my chemo, but he was not happy about it. You’d’ve thought he’d also be happy to know most of the people I knew who’d had chemo were still alive and kicking too more than five years later. But it was clear he was not very happy about this at all.