What If Prevention Is The Cure?

I just read something that absolutely resonates with me..

Certain cancer rates are rising in the U.S., and the medical establishment, led by the American Cancer Society, has focused almost exclusively on finding a cure. But other cancer activists want to take a look at the potential -- yes, potential -- causes of cancer, including toxics in the products we buy and in the environment. What if it turns out that prevention is the cure?

While I am all for a "cure" to my cancer -- and hopefully I am well on my way to achieving that goal -- I am also realistic enough to know that I am not immune to getting another kind of cancer or other health issue sometime down the road. Unfortunately, just because I have crossed this bridge once doesn't preclude me from crossing it again.

I know that there are some of you reading my blog who are probably tired all my ramblings about nutrition and pesticides and toxic chemicals, etc. And I have thought about creating a separate blog where I can continue to write about these issues for those who are interested while keeping this blog focused more exclusively on my day-to-day battle against cancer, but the reality is that I feel the issues are inseparable; they are not mutually-exclusive. As the statement above succinctly states: I feel strongly that prevention is going to be my cure.

Yes, modern Western medicine has played an invaluable role in getting this cancer out of my body and I will be forever grateful to the many doctors who have been involved in my care (Dr Gullion, Dr Poen, Dr Garcia-Aguilar, Michael Korn, Jeremy and Shannon), but I think that it's the actions that I take and the purchases that I make (or don't make) going forward that will help to prevent this cancer -- or any other cancer -- from coming back. And so, I cannot, in good faith, write about "beating the Bitch" without also referencing all that I have learned in these past 6 months about the multitude of factors that have been show to cause cancer in the first place.

There is so much information being written about this issue in the media today; I could literally be glued to my computer for hours on end following one article to the next. And these are not articles from super-liberal, left-wing magazines only -- I have read articles that speak about the impact of chemicals and toxins in our environment in media sources such as The Wall Street Journal, Time, Business Week, Vogue, Fortune, CNN, etc -- all very reputable sources from almost any perspective. And yet, American companies still continue to make products which are hazardous to our health and to our environment, and we, as consumers, continue to buy them. Why?? Based on my own personal experience and from conversations I have had with friends, I think that we resist change because change is hard; old habits are hard to break. And change is risky; it takes us out of our comfort zone to places unknown. And, in order to make good decisions, change requires education; but educating ourselves takes time. I am lucky in that I have had these past 6+ months to focus a huge amount of my time to educating myself about the causes of cancer, and I know that most people -- especially parents with young children -- don't have that same luxury. It wasn't that long ago that I was also a working mom trying to juggle a career and a family, and so I remember all too well how precious time can be in the face of multiple competing priorities. As I sit here writing, though, I can't help but hark back to a passage that I included in one of my earliest blog entries which is worth repeating again:

If we buy the illusion that we will live forever, we can waste all the time in the world before we start to live...Proximity to death wakes us up...to embrace death is not morbid; to deny death is morbid. If we know we will die, then we know that we are alive. From this mindful awareness can spring a variety of practices that deepen and enrich our time on this earth.

Of all the lessons that I hope are learned from my experience with cancer it's that we must embrace the life that we want today. Don't wait until tomorrow to start eating healthier or to stop drinking or to switch to a job which is more spiritually fulfilling or to tell your children that you love them. There is no one on this Earth -- myself included -- who has any guarantee that tomorrow will come. We only have this moment.