Door Number 3

In which our Heroine refuses to choose Sides

Dear All of You who are more Medically or Nutritionally Smarter than Me,

I don’t want to choose sides, okay?  I want to continue using my excellent brain surgeon, and if push comes to shove, even a radiologist or oncologist.  I am also pro-anasthesia, okay? My memories of the epidural are very close to my heart, so lay off.  In addition, if I want to use some disgusting cod liver oil and eat massive amounts of organic vegetable instead of an oversized daily vitamin, I think I should be able to do so without criticism. 

Is it so bad to want the best of both worlds?  Why can’t the different schools of medical thought work together for my benefit?  I read about a city in India where the very Western/high-tech medical facilities were right down the street from herbal stalls.  The author, in an attempt to answer how this could possibly work, asked many people how they choose their medical care.  The answer was an overwhelming mix of both sources of treatment.  For chronic conditions that had a lot to do with lifestyle (like high blood pressure, cholesterol, or even cancer), they went herbal every time.  For ailments that needed immediate or emergency attention (like a broken bone or a heart attack), patients chose the hospital. 

To continue: Please stop looking overly concerned for my mental health when I tell you of my explorations or preferences.  If you have to say something, then come up with a concrete reason after first keeping an open mind, please.  Try reading the other side’s literatures for a change.  It’s pretty convincing too.  Oh, and quit asking whether I am doing traditional herbal OR medical practice treatment.  Surely they are not so incompatible that they can’t work together for my good.  I take neither A nor B on its own.  I choose C.

Yours in  longevity,

T

The Day of the Hippie

In which our Heroine officially becomes a Hippie. 

 I’ve been teetering on the edge of hippie-ism for a while now.  First, I was born naturally mistrustful of authority.  Then I went to art school, and then studied art history.  (I liked my feminism theory class, okay?  And I think contemporary art forms are cool.)  About 5 year ago I quit using cosmetics and ditched hair spray.  Then last year I began grinding my own wheat and considered buying organic produce and grass-fed meats.  I got interested in aroma therapy, and only wish I was flexible enough to do yoga, and patient enough to do tai-chi. 

And yet, somehow, I didn’t quite see the herbal-remedy-for-cancer thing coming.  I am interested, I’ll admit.  I just don’t know how far I want to go into it. Again, I have trust issues.  I refuse to jump headlong into alternative therapy.  Meanwhile, I am more open to the idea than I ever thought possible.  Once I realized that much of the idea behind alternative medicine was to eat traditional, time-tested foods and herbs in an attempt at better health, I decided it might not be so bad.  It makes a kind of sense to eat 1) what God put on the earth for our good, and 2) what man has had millennia to test out (in case of side effects, etc…) in the hopes that it makes me healthier. 

However, I will admit that I am still cynical about most of the “miracle drugs/vitamins/ supplements” out there.  Ginkgo biloba and massive over-doses of vitamin C might be good, but I’ll be doing a lot of research to find out for sure, first.   

Meanwhile, I am turning into a hippie, and I didn’t even mean to do it.  Where will cancer take me next?