Let me give you an example. A doctor recommends a course of chemotherapy to a woman with extensive breast cancer, without offering any alternatives. For her, the alternatives in fact might include: a more or less intensive course of chemotherapy, use of different chemotherapy drugs; use of hormones; radiation treatment to the painful spots; no specific anti-cancer treatment at all; concentrating on controlling her pain with a suitable painkiller; prayer; a grape diet; or taking an overdose of her painkillers. To any one particular person, some of these will be attractive, others will be out of the question. To make the best decision, this woman needs to know the pros and cons of each alternative, and consider them in the light of her own particular life situation and beliefs. The best choice is not the same for everyone.

After getting all the information about these options, one young mother of three might decide to have intensive chemotherapy because she feels convinced that this has the best chance of prolonging her life. Another young mother of three might decide to have no chemotherapy at any stage because she has decided that, for her, the likely side effects are too great compared to the likely benefit. A third might decide to have the radiation treatment at this stage and the chemotherapy later when her symptoms come back. Each of these could be the best and most appropriate decision for each woman at that time.

As time goes by they may revise their decisions according to their own individual experiences. For example, after several months of chemotherapy, the first woman may decide the side effects she has experienced are too great to warrant continuing with it. The second woman might get to know a few other patients who have had successful chemotherapy and decide to try it herself. Again, these could be the best and most appropriate decisions for these women at that time.

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The regular addition of juices to a natural, wholesome cancer-fighting diet is a great way to strengthen body functions, prevent illness, maintain healthy skin, digestion and elimination, and enhance longevity. Juices can still be drunk up to six times per day while you are eating other nutritious wholesome foods.

Remember that all juices should be diluted with water. Try to drink more vegetable juices than fruit juices, as too much fruit sugar can rob the body of  vitamins and cause an imbalance in blood sugar levels. Juices do not contain much fibre. If you require a diet rich in fibre, simply add beneficial juices to your normal wholesome diet or add a fibre supplement such as psyllium husk, oatbran or rice-bran to your juices.

Nut Milk

Nut milk is delicious on a hot summer’s day. Simply blend 10 to 15 almonds, cashews or another type of nut, with 1 cup of purified water in a blender or food processor. Drink immediately or keep refrigerated.

Protein Energy Drink

1 cup nut milk, soy milk or skim milk

2 tablespoons LSA mix (crushed linseed, sunflower seeds, almonds) or 1 handful almonds, pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds

1 tablespoon lecithin granules

2 to 4 tablespoons flaxseed oil

1 teaspoon glutamine powder

2 to 4 teaspoons of slippery elm powder

1 banana or 1/4 paw paw, 3 to 4 dried apricots or berries

1 teaspoon spirulina, chlorella or barley grass powder or another type of high protein, nutrient packed powder

1 teaspoon of brown rice syrup or honey or 3 drops of stevia to flavour.

Simply place all the ingredients into a blender, blend together and serve.

Cancer-Clear Tea

1 part dandelion root

1/4 part nettle

1 part horsetail

1 part pau d’arco

1/2 part licorice root

1 part burdock root

2 parts red clover

Mix herbs together and keep in a glass jar. To make the tea, use 1 heaped teaspoon, pour 1 cup of boiling water over the top and let sit for 10 minutes. Sip slowly.

Herbs can be adjusted according to the specific type of cancer you are fighting. This is also a fantastic cancer-preventative tea.

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You can easily lose sight of the fact that there is no scientific evidence that stress causes cancer. You may be bombarded by urgings from friends and family to control the stress in your life because you have had cancer. Even casual comments take their toll: “I told you that you were working too hard.” “You can’t afford to get all wrapped up in everyone’s problems any more.”

The idea that you caused your cancer and can control your future health is reinforced by many popular self-help books. They suggest that you developed cancer because of repressed hostility, because you spent your life taking care of others’ needs instead of your own, or because you did not love yourself enough.

Dr. Bernie Siegel, in his best-selling book Love, Medicine, and Miracles, makes broad statements based on anecdotes and theory, not on fact. He states that 15-20 percent of all patients unconsciously, or even consciously, wish to die. He later states that the onset and course of disease are strongly linked to a person’s ability and willingness to cope with stress.

The aim of such self-help books is not to make you feel guilty about having gotten cancer but to make you feel empowered. If your mind could cause your cancer, changes in how you think, feel, and live will keep you from having cancer again. Siegel’s words of empowerment excite readers by claiming that potentially all patients can learn to heal themselves and stay well, that the course of your disease is strongly linked to your ability and willingness to cope with stress, and that if you can believe that you will get well, you have laid the foundation for your cure. He asserts that your attitude toward yourself is the single most important factor in healing or staying well and that your decisions concerning such things as eating, sleeping, smoking, exercising, and wearing seat belts control about 90 percent of the factors that determine your state of health. Not one of these assertions is based on scientific fact. Siegel’s books are best-sellers because people want to have control over their health and their lives. He offers you this sense of control.

Love, Medicine, and Miracles presents some wonderful points, such as the importance of working as a team with your doctor and trusting your doctor, the value of support groups, and the limitations of statistics. It offers healthy philosophies, such as the idea that there is always hope, that there is no such thing as false hope, and that the key to a full life is aiming for personal peace and peace with those around you.

What does it mean if my thinking is less clear than before my cancer?

Clouded thinking, frequent loss of train of thought, or difficulty in processing or remembering things is a common problem after cancer treatment. One young accountant found it hard to remember telephone numbers and calculate figures in his head. Working with numbers had formerly been his claim to fame. He was afraid that he had survived his cancer only to develop Alzheimer’s disease.

Changes in memory and mental clarity are distressing. You may feel diminished self-esteem. Your awareness that you are different from the way you were is intensified. You may get anxious that something is seriously wrong with you.

On a practical level the mental changes affect the quality and efficiency of your work. This can cause increased stress at home and at work. Forgetting to pay the rent, pick up the children from camp, or take out the garbage on pickup day disrupts everyone’s day. When you are aware of the mental changes, you may try to compensate by concentrating hard on everything you do, leaving extra time for “goofs,” double-checking everything you do. Such efforts will help you perform normally but will drain your energy.

Tell your doctor if you notice changes in your memory or your ability to think clearly. The changes have many possible physical or emotional explanations. After evaluating you, your doctor may be able to reassure you that there is nothing seriously wrong and that you can expect the changes to resolve with time. This news will save you a lot of worry (about recurrent cancer, say, or swelling in the brain). If something needs medical attention, it will be attended to sooner rather than later.

Many medical and emotional changes after treatment can affect memory and cause clouded thinking. Any combination of the following may be playing a role:

• side effects of current medications

• aftereffects of cancer treatment

• aftereffects of your cancer (e.g., brain cancer)

• hormonal imbalance

• fatigue

•emotional stress, anxiety, or depression

What If My Balance Is Off?

A sense of imbalance or vertigo can be due to

• side effects of, or withdrawal of, medications

•aftereffects of cancer treatments

•aftereffects of your cancer (e.g., a tumor of the brain or ear)

• allergies

• hormonal imbalance

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What Causes the Aftereffects of Chemotherapy?

Many of the symptoms or problems you may experience in the first one to two years after completion of chemotherapy are directly due to your chemotherapy. For instance, strong drugs designed to control cancer cells, i.e., chemotherapy, can cause various changes in your blood, such as anemia, which makes you weak and tired, or low white blood cell counts, which put you at increased risk for certain infections. Some chemotherapy treatments can affect hormone-producing organs such as the ovaries and testicles. Hormone changes can produce a variety of different side effects, including changes in your emotions and sense of v being. Some chemotherapy can cause temporary or permanent damage to other organs, such as liver inflammation or weakened kidneys. This damage can affect your stamina or appetite, уour capacity to handle medications, and your risk of certain infection.

Other symptoms and problems following chemotherapy related only indirectly to the treatments. For example, chemotherapy-induced changes in taste sensation may cause you to eat less. This, in turn, can result in vitamin deficiencies and malnutrition. Fatigue, a common aftereffect of chemotherapy, can be due in p to the cumulative effects of the demands of healing (all the places that had cancer are now healing and either returning to their pre-cancerous state or developing a cancer-free scar).

Some of your symptoms are caused, or worsened, by the experience of having had cancer and chemotherapy, and are not really due to the chemotherapy itself. For example, the emotional stress and change in your sleep patterns can cause fatigue and irritability.

How Does Chemotherapy Cause Late Effects (Changes Seen Mont to Years after Completion of Chemotherapy)?

Chemotherapy causes many changes in your body. Some of them are detectable during the months when you are receiving your
chemotherapy. Others are first detectable weeks, months, or even years after you received your last dose of chemotherapy. Norm age-related changes, infections, or the development of other med cal problems, such as diabetes, may make a chemotherapy-related change more obvious. For example, if you suffer subtle hearing loss as a result of your chemotherapy, you may not notice it until years later, when the effect of age-related hearing loss is added on.

Changes caused by chemotherapy that can result in aftereffects include

•changes in normal cells that cause them to become cancer cells; for example, causing leukemia or solid tumors

•changes in the reproductive organs (e.g., ovaries, testicles); for example, causing sterility and menopause •changes in other hormone-secreting organs (e.g., adrenal glands)

•changes in the heart muscle; for example, caused by high-dose Adriamycin

•scarring of the lung; for example, caused by bleomycin, mitomycin-C, BCNU (Carmustine), or cyclophosphamide

•injury to kidneys; for example, caused by cisplatin

•injury to nerves; for example, caused by vincristine or cisplatin

•changes in the brain; for example, caused by methotrexate, when given into the spinal fluid

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What If I Feel Lonely?

Completing intensive therapy may feel like returning to earth from another planet. It is common to feel that most of the people around you do not really understand where you have been or where you are now. You may feel unsure of your responsibilities, your role, or even your identity. You are not your pre-cancer self, you are no longer a full-time or part-time cancer patient, and you are not yet feeling normal. You are living in limbo.

You have left the security of organized, predictable, frequent medical attention. Even though you did not like being poked and prodded for all your evaluations and treatments, these inconveniences were accompanied by companionship and support. All that individual attention ended abruptly with your last treatment.

Your family, friends, co-workers, and acquaintances may feel awkward trying to relate to you now that your treatments are over. You step in the elevator and greet longtime acquaintances. They say hello and then look from their shoes to the elevator numbers to the walls and back to their shoes. Not wanting to say the wrong thing, and not knowing what to say, they say nothing. Simple interchange that you use to confirm your sense of belonging is strained, feeding your sense of loneliness.

After dealing with serious medical and emotional issues, you may feel uncomfortable or impatient with others’ relatively mundane conversation. It is especially lonely when you feel that you no longer fit into your old world but that you do not yet have a new world to replace that of being a cancer patient. Take comfort in knowing that you will fit in again with time.

The bottom line is that you went through treatment and faced a life-threatening illness yourself. No matter how much love and support you feel, you are the one facing your illness, your fears, and your future.

One of the hardest aspects of completing treatment is that the average observer seems to expect you to feel only relief and joy. The average person does not recognize the stress of completing therapy. You may keep your fears and anxieties to yourself to avoid sounding ungrateful or pathologically depressed. Surviving your personal challenge of cancer can be very lonely.

What Can I Do If I Feel Lonely?

Surviving cancer is lonely only as long as you keep other people shut out of your world. Take the time and energy to explain to the people close to you how you feel and what you are thinking. The people who care about you are not mind readers. Dealing with your survival is new territory for them as well as for you, and they need your input to know how best to relate to you and how to help you. Be sure they understand that you are not necessarily sharing your problems and feelings in order for them to fix things. Just having an understanding, sympathetic ear is comforting and healing.

If you believe that there are absolutely no people out there who could possibly understand how you feel, then you have not connected yourself with cancer survivors farther along the road to recovery. Many survivors understand what you have been through and how you feel now. Many appreciate the chance to share and help. They can help you in a way that the most well-intentioned, loving, and thoughtful people who have not experienced cancer cannot. Now is a good time to find out about support groups, hotlines, and one-on-one matched support people such as the American Cancer Society’s “CanSurmount” if you did not pursue this during your cancer therapy. Some cancer survivors wait years to try a support group, having lived with loneliness, fear, and anger for an unnecessarily long time.

If you feel lonely, reach out to others.

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If I Was on a Special Diet Other Than a Low-Cholesterol Diet before My Cancer Treatment, Should I Resume It?

If you had some condition that required dietary modifications before your cancer, such as diabetes, hypoglycemia, or lactose intolerance, have your doctor reassess whether you still have this condition. Your doctor can advise you if and when you should resume the dietary modifications.

Your cancer or cancer treatment may have caused a change in your previous condition such that your special diet must be adjusted. Some people may no longer require dietary restrictions or modifications, whereas others may require greater restrictions.

Can I Develop a Condition That Requires Dietary Changes?

When people go for a routine complete medical checkup, the doctor checks for diabetes, high cholesterol, and other medical conditions that improve with dietary modification. Whether you have been treated for cancer or not, you still need to be checked for these conditions. Cancer does not protect you from these other conditions.

Some people discover diabetes or other conditions during or soon after cancer treatment. In many cases it is coincidence. In others the cancer or its treatment did play a role in bringing on the condition.

Can Diet Prevent Cancer?

Most cancer survivors find themselves inundated with information about cancer prevention diets. Newspapers, magazines, newsletters, television, books, and word of mouth are sources of advice about cancer prevention diets.

There are no placebo-controlled double-blind studies evaluating the effect of diet on the development of cancer or the treatment of cancer. However, there is strong statistical evidence based on epidemiological studies that diet is related to the development of certain types of cancer, so it seems likely that diet can help prevent certain cancers.

Is There a Reliable Cancer Prevention Diet?

The key to prevention is moderation and variety. Eating any food in moderation and eating a variety of foods probably afford your best protection against cancer. The American Cancer Society offers these recommendations for a cancer prevention diet:

•Avoid obesity.

• Eat a low-fat diet.

• Eat cruciferous vegetables (cabbage, broccoli, brussels sprouts)

• Avoid excessive alcohol consumption.

•Be moderate in your consumption of salt-cured, smoked, or nitrite-cured foods.

• Eat four to six helpings of fruits and vegetables daily.

The National Health and Medical Research Council booklet, Dietary Guidelines for Australians, provides practical advice on how to improve your diet in general.

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