Holiday Cheese Eating

Forgive me. I'm a little behind in letting you know this video is live.
I plead the flu. More of my videos here.

Bombshell

I received an email yesterday inviting me to participate in a discussion on HuffPost Live with Suzanne Somers regarding her new book, Bombshell. I was eager to accept, but unfortunately, didn't receive the email in time and missed my chance.

In case you don't know about her, Somers' books live on the controversial fringe of medicine. She touts a mixture of medical truths and dangerous myths, suggesting that if we just eat right, take the right supplements, and use the right cleaning products in our homes, cancer, and indeed aging itself, can be overcome or better yet, completely avoided. 

When I was diagnosed with cancer, friends confessed to me that they were scared not only because they cared for and worried about me, but also because they regarded me as a model of healthy living. Nobody wants to think that you could do everything "right" and still get cancer. It is by far more preferable, indeed downright seductive, to believe that we have some control when it comes to avoiding the spectre of disease. 

Rationally, it does make sense to treat our bodies well. It puts us in the best possible position to bounce back if disaster strikes. But the flip side of the reassurance of the illusion of control is the cruelty of blame. The truth is, disaster can strike anyone, at any time. Even if you're very very good. And sometimes bouncing back is not possible.  Even if you fight very hard.

I'm suspicious of pills. I cure my headaches with a good cry, or a big glass of water and a nap. And if that fails, I suffer and complain and annoy everyone around me unti the pain subsides. As I'm sure you can imagine, chemotherapy terrified me. I regarded cancer drugs as crude poisons, a carpet bombing approach with my body as a battlefield. I wanted to nurture my body's natural immunities. I wanted a friendlier, more nuanced approach, and I plowed into research. I was excited by what I read about the power of every day foods and spices. Green tea. Curcumin. Black pepper. Mustard greens. I found Somers' message to be very hopeful and attractive. But the deeper I dug the more disappointed I became.

There may be something in green tea and black pepper and curcumin that can cure cancer, but the research simply isn't there. Nor is it there for many of the "designer supplements" Suzanne Somers espouses, let alone the miracle cures you'll happen upon on Googling alternative therapies. I read one about melting tumors in a single day by alternating seven-minute hot and cold showers directed on the tumor site) and crazy diets (one that sticks in my memory involved a lot of cottage cheese). It isn't to say that all that is "alternative" is bad, or that the science is always absent. It's just that rigorous study is expensive, and drug companies don't put money into something that can't one day turn a profit. You can't patent "eat more vegetables." And besides all that, you can't ethically withhold a drug that has proven results in favor of experimentally trying something that does not.

Here's where it gets dangerous. Somers had breast cancer. She had a lumpectomy and radiation but refused chemotherapy, and she claims that chemotherapy "rarely works." Perhaps that is true for her particular cancer. For many women with cancer confined to the breast, chemotherapy isn't even recommended in the first place, the benefit is marginal at best. I don't know the details of her diagnosis but I do know that mine was more advanced. It was in my lymph nodes. It was all over my right breast. It was the most aggressive of its type. Chemotherapy was emphatically recommended. But even so, if a hundred women with my same profile and exact diagnosis refused chemo, a few would have survived without recurrence. Why? I'm sure every one of them would have an answer. Prayer. Meditation. Broccoli. Luck. And every one of them would be convinced of their cure. But it would be dangerous to evangelize to others about their approach. Without peer-reviewed, double-blind, rigorous study, it's downright irresponsible.

Pushing for research, and a health care system not driven by profit, however, is another story entirely. 

Falling Behind

Been sick the last couple weeks (nothing serious, just that darn chest cold thing that's going around). Holiday updates are on the way, but in the meantime, there's this... More of my videos here.

Matthew Morrison and the Question of Being Important

More of my videos here.

My brother who lives in Los Angeles has dozens of stories of interactions with celebrities, but I do not. Come to think of it, I only have two.

The first happened late at night in the mid 1990s as I was leaving a nearly deserted train station in New Haven, Connecticut. I don't remember why I was there, or why I had my mother's car, but I do remember driving it past the station doors on my way out. And I remember recognizing the lone young woman with the long brown curls standing outside with a backpack slung over her shoulder. It was Sara Gilbert, the actress better known as Darlene Connor on the then popular sitcom "Roseanne." I was actually a fan of hers. I related to the sarcastic misfit, athletic, strong-minded, unsexy character she played, and I was grateful to see that such a character could be celebrated on TV. My jaw dropped and my eyebrows shot up. In other words, I made the silent human face equivalent of a great big loud exclamation point. She saw me, rolled her eyes, and looked away.

Her reaction made me realize that I was seeing "celebrity" rather than "human being." It was embarrassing.

My second celebrity encounter, documented in the video above, comes many years later with a personal introduction and no eye-rolling, but I still felt it, that chasm between celebrity and human. It was a thrill to meet Matt Morrison, and that felt somehow wrong.

Why should it matter so much to us common folk to have met a celebrity? Why do these superficial interactions hold our attention?

My guess is we all need to feel important and mostly don't feel that way. These brushes with fame, or the famous, give us a glimmer of an inkling of what it might feel like if we actually believed we matter. I mean really REALLY matter.

So now I'm wondering, what would life be like if we flipped this dynamic on it's head? If we decided to act as if we KNEW we were important, as if anyone, celebrities included, would be THRILLED to be with US. If every morning we got out of bed as an important person about to have an important day.

Because the truth is, you ARE important. And this day is one of the precious unrepeatable days of YOUR important life, worthy of your full attention, worthy of savor.

I plan to savor myself, MY day.

But first, can I have your autograph?

Beyond Pink Ribbons

The latest of the video diary: Hurricane Sandy, cancer check up, and the Thiingamaboob. More of my videos here.

You can download the music in this video for free: "Presenterator" by Kevin MacLeod

http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Kevin_MacLeod/Funk_Sampler/

is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

I watched Pink Ribbons, Inc. last night on Netflix and I highly recommend it. It's disturbing, and important, and says well a bunch of things I've only attempted to say poorly.

Thanks Be

With no cancer check-ups on the horizon until January and no major athletic challenges until February (more on that later), I am enjoying this opportunity to take care of body, complete work projects, and overhaul my house from the ground up. Literally. Just last night I went on a rampage cleaning the basement, a chore that has been on my list for months. It felt great to finally feel inspired to get to it. So great, in fact, that I started thinking about scraping and re-finishing the upstairs bathroom ceiling. I've been watching the popcorn ceiling paint come down in flakes and chunks for years and not until now has the task seemed within my reach.

Life is good!

Treasure Map

Regular readers will not be surprised to learn that I believe in emotion. Not as a guide to action — action should be guided by the logical application of information — but as a natural healing mechanism. I think of emotions as "X" marks on the treasure maps of our psyches, the important places to dig in and express in order to recover our full, vibrant, naturally intelligent, creative, and energetic selves. Toward that end, this last video with more laughter per square minute (and a few tears) than ever before. Enjoy!

PS. Music from this video comes to you from BJ Block & Dawn Pemberton and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. You can download it for free here.