ii) And how long are those side effects likely to persist? For a few minutes, weeks, years? Will they be permanent?
iii) How might they be managed if they do occur? For example, there are many good treatments available these days for the side effects of chemotherapy, and hair that falls out because of chemotherapy commonly grows back fairly quickly.
(d) What impact will my own response to the treatment have on the outcome? In truth, the answer to this question may be harder to define than the previous three. The medical system is very good at evaluating its results. This is made easier by the fact that a single intervention, such as a drug therapy, is relatively easy to study and accurately evaluate. By contrast, the human being is incredibly complex—the role of emotions, mind and spirit are extremely interwoven. They are not so amenable to the standard double-blind, crossover trials used to research and evaluate so many drugs.
What does seem clear, however, is that how you respond has the potential to affect the outcome of anything you do. If in cancer treatment you are treated with chemotherapy, full of fear and loathing, preoccupied with potential side effects and the possibilities of damaging your immune system, you are highly likely to undermine the potential benefits of that treatment. If, on the other hand, you think it through and decide to accept the treatment, regard it as in your best interest and do all you can to work with it, you are likely to get the very best from that treatment.
The Key to Great Outcomes • Embrace Everything You Do
This is why you are strongly advised to make conscious decisions about all you do. Nearly always, there are pluses and minuses to consider when making medical decisions. Take your time and think things through. If you need help with this, a very useful decision-making technique that draws on both the intellect and intuition is presented soon in the first chapter on mind training (chapter 7).
Once you do come to a decision, the strong recommendation is to embrace all that you do. Embrace! Not just put up with, not just tolerate, nor even just accept it. Embrace it! Understand that this is what you have chosen to do. It is in your best interest—like when you would take antibiotics for pneumonia. Know that whether it be having chemotherapy, changing your diet or practicing meditation, the more you welcome it into your life, the better you feel about doing it, the more you support your choice, the more you embrace it—the better it will work.
When you embrace what you do, you release all the positive potentials of your mind, emotions and spirit. My belief is that when you embrace a treatment and really work with it in positive expectation, then you can reasonably hope to get the best possible results with the least side effects.
However, given all this, you may still have a very difficult decision to make.
The reality is that most current treatments for cancer are hard on the patients—sometimes very hard. It is a fact that most of the conventional therapies are toxic to the body. Radiation and chemotherapy frequently impair the body’s own immune system along with other components of its defense mechanism. This reduces the body’s ability to heal itself. Often this impairment is severe and side effects can be marked. Radiation burns, vomiting and loss of hair are obvious problems that can follow. Tiredness, lethargy, “foggy” thinking, depression and loss of memory are all observed as regular consequences of cancer treatments.
The impact of many medical treatments upon the rest of the body can be less obvious, but nevertheless more drastic in nature. Minor infections that previously would have been of no consequence can assume major proportions. Most important, the body’s own ability to fight the cancer is frequently lessened.
However, while the side effects of conventional treatment require careful consideration, chemotherapy or radiotherapy may still be the best medical treatments that are available at present. It may well be that it is in your best interest to use them. If this is the case and if you are having a toxic form of therapy, it is all the more important to concentrate on those self-help techniques that aim to boost the immune system and help the body to help itself. These techniques are discussed in later chapters.
Be Brave—Communicate!
Here again, good communication with your doctor is essential. The ideal is to be able to discuss all your concerns freely and easily with your main doctor. If this is not the case, talk with that doctor about the communication problem. We all know how some personalities clash and there are some people we just do not seem able to get along with. If you cannot find a way to correct the situation and communicate well, then request a referral to someone more suited to your temperament. No one should be offended by this. It will make life easier and more constructive for everyone. (For more detailed recommendations, see Appendix A.)
The final choice regarding what conventional treatment to accept may still be difficult. Again recognize the value of making this decision with clarity and confidence and the imperative of committing to what you do decide to do. A reminder then of the value of taking your time. Better to avoid a rushed, hasty decision that may later cause you doubt or regret. Best to take your time, seek expert opinion, discuss the options with those you value, contemplate, give due regard to your intuition and then commit.
Maybe in the final analysis it is the level of confidence and trust you place in the doctor(s) involved that decide it for you.
If surgery is what seems necessary, it seems wise to leave the details of the surgery to your surgeon. If chemotherapy is something else that you decide to commit to, again it would seem wise to leave the choice of agents to your chemotherapist.
You may desire, however, to know more or less of the details of your treatment and you can reasonably expect to have your questions answered in an open, cooperative manner.
Whatever the final choices you make, the next step is to do all that you possibly can to make sure the treatment works to full effect. We will discuss the means to achieve this throughout the book.
How to Enhance Surgery, Chemotherapy or Radiotherapy
The majority of people diagnosed with cancer will have one or more of the conventional treatments recommended to them, and decide to commit to the treatment. With the intention of minimizing any side effects and maximizing the benefits, it is important to be well prepared and to do the best possible to work with any treatments. While the details of what to do unfold in the coming chapters, a quick summary of the recommendations regarding how to prepare for medical treatments forms Appendix B.
Activating Your Inner Healer
Based upon many years of clinical experience and supported by the most recent research, the way to activate healing through your own efforts is easy to define. Your body’s capacity to heal is directly affected by what you eat, what you drink, and whether or not you smoke. Sunlight, vitamin D and exercise all play important roles, as does your emotional life and state of mind. How you manage stress, your capacity to relax, to be mindful and to meditate—along with the way your spiritual view impacts on your life and those around you; all these factors impact on the inner healer.
While I have to say it strikes me as a somewhat bland term, all these elements are best described as being under the banner of lifestyle medicine—they are to do with the things you can control and do in the course of your daily life. And the key? It is your mind. Again, it is your mind that decides what you eat and drink. It is the mind that helps you to adopt a healthy, healing lifestyle or remain stuck in old unhelpful habits. Truly, it is the mind that changes everything and so we will begin the road to recovery with the mind.
To embark on the healing journey, to embrace outer help with conventional medicine, TM and CAM, to begin to activate the inner healer—all this is best achieved by being in a stable state of mind, clear and confident. What meditation promises and reliably delivers is a stable, clear mind. As stability becomes more constant, clarity more natural, and confidence more assured, it becomes easier to go from the broad recommendations regarding what to eat, how much to