I am the girl who rode her bike to the library, took out six books, read them all, and returned them before their due date. These essays-Good Reads- are a series about the books that have influenced my life.
The Book: Anticancer A New Way of Life by David Servan Schreiber MD, PhD (2009)
From Amazon: Anticancer’s synthesis of science and personal experience marks a transformation in the way we understand and confront cancer. A long-running bestseller that has changed the lives of millions around the world, Anticancer remains a pioneering and peerless resource, an inspirational and revolutionary guide to “a new way of life.”
Why This Book Matters To Me:
There are so many chapters in my life and the wide range of my reading reflects this. One life chapter that has had a profound effect on me was a cancer diagnosis. Lymphoma. “Incurable” they said, but possibly manageable if new technologies yielded new treatments soon enough. Soon enough for what?
Oh.
So I’m just supposed to just sit around and hope for new treatments to magically appear, just in time?
My prospects for survival instantly went from fine (maybe watch the margaritas?) to dubious. Well meaning friends offered rides to chemo for the first month or so. But each round of chemo meant two day infusions every six weeks, and a horrific week of other drugs after that. I wore out their hospitality pretty quickly.
The reality was that people didn’t know what to say or do, so they simply, politely, withdrew. One, a pediatric cardiologist who lived up the street from me, remarked “I think of you every time I drive by your house.”
But did she call? Reach out. Text, even?
My life became entangled with the medical machinery tasked with supposedly saving it. Those nice white coated doctors don’t tell you that the very industry that is supposed to save you will destroy you, by destroying your finances, your social networks, your health (or what remains of it), your mental well being and your very sense of self .
Cancer, for me, yielded two main experiences that influence my life to this day. The first was intense social isolation. Everyone fell away. Where I had once been a tennis partner of choice, now no one wanted to play with me. Playing was about winning, but I wasn’t up to my usual caliber of play.
A long term boyfriend lacked the emotional capacity to understand my experience. That fell apart.
Business friend’s ideas of support fell flat. “I didn’t realize your face was so thin!” one woman commented as the tumors in my neck receded with repeated rounds of chemo.
I’ve experienced alone before, but this was something more. I was living in an alternative universe, solo, with a sense of mortality that infused every single day.
Ironically this isolation eventually gave me the space to explore my own awareness and start what became a personal spiritual quest. For that I’m eternally grateful. But it’s not been an easy road.
After isolation, the second profound experience of cancer was a sense of an utter loss of control over my life. This alien creature inside of me was growing and spreading, and all I could do was show up for another round of chemo, which by my doctor’s very admission was just the first in a sequence of treatments before me, extending for years, perhaps forever.
This sense of not helplessness, but pointlessness, was so disempowering. I am someone used to setting a goal and going for it. Surely there was something I could DO. And then I discovered Anti-Cancer A New Way of Life.
This book became my constant companion. It gave me a sense of control in an absolutely uncontrollable situation. Don’t think of it as a cancer or health book. It’s a wonderfully written, totally mesmerizing story about one man’s refusal to accept what the medical establishment took as gospel.
It was written by David Servan Schreiber MD, PhD. in 2009 (the year I was diagnosed). He was a neuroscientist on staff at the University of Pittsburgh. One evening, he was running a series of brain scans and one of the volunteers didn’t show up. So he went through the scanner himself.
And he discovered he had a brain tumor.
The next year was a blur of surgery and radiation. His marriage fell apart. At the end of the year, with a seemingly clean bill of health, he asked his oncologist what he should do.
“Go back to your life,” he was told. So he did. He went back to a frantic lifestyle, with a terrible diet, and lots of stress. And the tumor came back.
This time, he went on a world wide quest to understand what created “anticancer”health and he wrote this incredible book. The book is part personal story, part roadmap to health and part detailed footnotes (which are fascinating reading).
It’s a scientist’s approach to anticancer living. And it gave me hope. Because it showed that I did have control over some things. So I focused (imperfectly) on those items: diet, exercise, stress management, and social connection.
After forays into hedonism (margaritas) and veganism (I would look longingly at the cheese department every time I went to Trader Joe’s), I eventually settled on an organic, real food, low glycemic diet. Meditation entered my life. I was evolving on so many levels. And there was no going back. Taking charge. Taking back control. This was my path to my salvation. I was sure of it.
This focus on taking charge of my health would lead me in directions I never expected, including the start of a fledgling writing career with a website called Anticancer Club which in 2016 reached well over 20 million people on Twitter alone. Fifty thousand on Facebook. And much more.
Today the world is abuzz about Casey Means’ new book, but all the info was in Anticancer 15 years ago. I, for one, have taken the message to heart. It’s changed my life. And the cancer? After six years of this repetitive cycle of worry and fear; bills and appointments; tests and followup, I walked away from the medical system. I sold my house to travel. I decided that I would not live tethered to an IV line. I would instead seek adventure. Adventure, for me, is a critical component of life. The outcome would be what it would be.
My life once again became unpredictable. But this time I found peace in the uncertainty of being alive, versus merely existing, haunted by the constant fear of disease.
This entire cancer experience sent my life off on a tangent I never could’ve dreamed of. It would take me to several continents, a new life direction, threats of a multi-million dollar lawsuit and much more. Talk about a bump in the road!
But one of my first steps towards reclaiming my life was this book. Pick it up. Anticancer A New Way of Life is a great read. It just might change your life. It did mine.