Cancer Remedies: Do I Have to

It is usual when someone has cancer for the individual and society to think in terms of using every possible drug in the medical arsenal to attack the cancer in an attempt to subdue and kill it. Many a patient has been told that they have to "Fight the cancer." This is the case whether the cancer remedies being sought are conventional medical approaches or one of the natural cancer treatments. But do we really have to "Fight" cancer?

Some months ago I was discussing this with a nurse who used massage, aromatherapy and other alternative treatments alongside the conventional medical care prescribed by the patients' doctors. I mentioned that it might not be necessary for patients to "fight" and that what we are talking about are metaphors, not the reality itself.

It was as though I had opened Pandora's Box. She very quickly moved from being anxious to angry to a sort of fury. How dare I try to kill her patients by taking away the last weapon they had: their own will to fight the dread disease. I decided to beat a retreat but thought quite a lot about her response. I realized that the concept of "fighting cancer" had become a belief as strong as many religious beliefs and for some the thought of not fighting was very disempowering.

As a researcher I have undertaken much research with people who doctors thought could not survive their terminal conditions, and who not only survived but thrived. What I discovered in this research was that although a number of the survivors talked about "fighting" their disease, their lives illustrated a different story.

What the survivors actually did was to accept the illness, not fight it. While they accepted they were ill, that the doctors had given them a terminal diagnosis they did not necessarily accept that the illness was terminal. Those that did accept the diagnosis was terminal later changed their minds, and they decided the illness was either chronic or in remission, or going into remission.

Their focus was not on fighting their cancer, but on what they could do on that day to improve their quality of life for that day, and for the future. Very early on in the illness process much of their day to day focus was on undertaking the conventional radiotherapy and chemotherapy. But within that they also kept their family and personal values intact.

The survivors recognized that although they couldn't control their cancer they could take charge of much of their lives. They would focus on what was important to them and became a very strong personality. How this actually worked out in practice was very different for each of them.

The cancer became just another part of their very complex lives. Yes, it got in the way of other parts of their life, but instead of becoming very irritated and angry they moved quite quickly to accepting its presence and then working out how to get around the inconveniences of the symptoms and treatment. Yes, they acknowledged, the treatment was horrendous, but... and then they would go on to express some aspect of something important to them.

Life, and the cancer which was part of their life, was not something to be fought, but to be accepted. I won't go as far as saying that they embraced their cancer and the other negativities of life, but they embraced the rest of their lives and accepted the less than desirable aspects.

Fighting is a highly stressful activity and high negative stress further compromises an immune system that is attempting to deal with the disease. Acceptance and focusing on the positive aspects that they could control are much more likely to have a positive impact on the immune system and contribute to healing.

We don't usually think of positive psychological attributes as being a cancer remedy or a natural cancer treatment. However, perhaps we should.