“You have decided the length of our lives. You know how many months we will live, and we are not given a minute longer.”
Job 14:5
(“But it’s your choice” Cancerventures Book Excerpt)
…“But it’s your choice” usually then followed.
They didn’t sincerely seem to mean it when they said it. I felt the specialists were just referring to a handbook script.
And again, I felt hostility coming at me when they spat the words. I felt there would have been much more enthusiasm if I would have begged them, “Do whatever you think is best; do whatever it takes.”
But that was not my response. I fully intended on exercising my choice and I knew there was a far wider variety from which to choose. It ran contrary to the more restrictive bullying “professional” advice of mandatory surgery, chemo, radiation, hormones, drugs, and a constant protocol of test after test.
Nope. I wasn’t doing ALL of that. I’m making my choice instead. But I didn’t feel supported to make it; I felt I was only challenged and dissuaded from making the “wrong” choice.
So, to the medical community: when you make this statement, remember who gets to make the choice.
Here’s a hint: it’s not you.
It’s also not the patient’s job to make you happy, to reassure you, or tell you how great of a doctor you are. It’s simply up to the patient to make his/her choice about his/her body and
life.
And it’s not required you agree with it or like it. Again, unless the patient specifically asks for your opinion, keep it to yourself. Thank you.
But, yet again, things are just never that simply practiced. When I revealed to more than one specialist of my decision on chemo, I heard this statement…
“So, you’ll be undertreated…”
It smacked to me, as that of, “I’m not good enough.” “I didn’t treat my cancer in a good enough way.”
That statement judged and sentenced me to defeat. I might as well have planned my funeral during that office appointment.
I guess the medical community only has faith in the entirety of the cancer treatment program: surgery, chemo, radiation, hormone blockers and related drug treatment. Picking and choosing from that arrangement is tantamount to a death sentence.
But each cancer situation- and each cancer patient- is different- in multiple ways.
For some, certain elements of this comprehensive treatment approach can be overkill and unnecessary.
For some, it can be harmful, whether physically, emotionally, or mentally.
Some of these options can destroy quality of life. In example…
Chemotherapy is poison, killing off cancer cells, but not without killing healthy cells also.
Surgery is risky.
Radiation causes skin burns.
Hormone blockers and related drug treatments cause unpleasant side effects, including additional pain, anxiety, and discomfort, through such things as hot flashes and sleep disturbances.
“Science never solves a problem without creating ten more.”
George Bernard Shaw
Bottom line, medical community: you cannot control what will or will not happen because of- or in spite of- a treatment or a certain choice. You don’t get to perfectly control how the cancer will run its course in an individual patient, be it remission, recurrence, or death...
“My times are in your hands; deliver me from the hands of my enemies, from those who pursue me.”
Psalm 31:15
