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jegol71
USA
78 Posts |
 Posted - 05/30/2013 : 18:24:47
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I moved this post away from Sylvia's thread to address Ace and anyone particularly interested in what I write directly, so as to not distract.
Ace and I had a nice dialogue about what really works with cancer. What really touched my heart was seeing him guide Sylvia, another poster here, about a specific type of treatment. People of habitual worry seem to more easily categorize the statements of others into absolution. One that seemed directed at Ace was that people thought he was like a mad satyr about strain, prancing among people with diseases, bleating that they should do away with all treatments and focus solely on his keys. His post disproved that.
We got to talking about what works with cancer treatment and what doesn't. I have one perspective that has an authority, he has an obviously superior other. I had a lot to say on the topic, so I did. Here it is.
My father was an intensivist for over twenty years, who succumbed to leptomeningeal carcinomatosis after a year and a half of treating his adenocarcinoma of the esophagus with aggressive chemotherapy. The two-year survival rate was so low that I thought he would have been better off committing suicide. I know about his journey through cancer, through fear, through strength and probably pseudo-peace because I was by his side for much of it. I was the one who read the ethics minutes from meetings he led to find his words about medical futility, which gave me the "OK" to send him home with Hospice instead of pursuing intrathecal chemo or anything more.
Here is his obituary: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/palmbeachpost/obituary.aspx?pid=144870654
All the rituals I wrote about in the other thread I went through by his side. He was a rational humanist, a scientist, reduced to spending money like a hopeful boy on treatments he was sure would work. He did emotional work that I know of, but it was always under the auspices of healing the cancer, not the work itself (or at least that's how it appeared to me). I feel, in retrospect, that his best life at the end would have been had by getting the treatment he did at Sloan-Kettering, plus following the song of an unstrained heart as best he could. I am sure that doing all the ancillary diet changes did nothing for him, as he couldn't even adhere to the protocols (which is how much of this works: make the protocol so spartan that it's impossible for anything except a trash compactor to follow, then retort "Well, you didn't follow the protocol!"). Furthermore, his forays into tong ren, organized meditation, music therapy, acupuncture, chanting, incense and all else churning on the kitchen's sink film were done as things to check off on a list. How can one not be afraid?
Most "healers" he went to indoctrinated him with a reassuring smirk, almost a war veteran's grizzle that culled distinctly and solely from their personal selection of memories of all the people they've "cured." This flippant behavior made my scared Dad perceive that he was in the presence of a divinity that was anathema to his medical education, in a sense giving him someone to pray to. Did this help at all? He died all the same with much less money, and as I saw, not much less fear.
Knowing my Dad, who also had diabetes type-II, he treated life like a succession of shear forces that his structure would have to bear, getting on through life with a machete and a grimace to show the world who's boss, that the world wouldn't affect him. The pain of life became mastered as an existential joke about misery and a change of subject. He had more pain than I did.
Ironically, this is the man who told me to seek emotional healing for my pain situation. Physician heal thyself. I believe that if he was able to access the breadth of his inner turmoil better, I'm not yet prepared to say that he wouldn't have cancer, but I am prepared to say that he would have led the life he wanted me to lead.
Ace wrote:
"Jegol,
"The problem is that even though I think I understand the basic cause, most are not willing or able to do the psychological work and reconditioning. Even if they are motivated, it is hard,(just like a severe case of TMS). How do I help these? (maybe I cant, but Im still trying to understand)."
The question becomes clear, Ace. We're all dealing with deep, deep, deep stuff. Any attempts to itemize these depths through a text will denature and undermine the depths the moment pen hits paper. Solving personal reconditioning into happiness, at this stage of our evolution, is kind of like making a sculpture out of shifting sand, or dividing by a number that is sometimes zero (during inattentive moments). I think that if you are waiting to write your book until you are satisfied that you can teach ALL people how to relax, then you will be waiting forever. You can streamline the words, popularize the points as best you can, but at the end of all this, besides your knowledges of self and science, you have ONLY YOUR STORIES, YOUR JOURNIES, to fall back on.
You've taught yourself so much beyond your training, it seems. But if you do not want to teach others out of a fear of producing something that may not help everyone, well then you'll never make it as a screenwriter. But seriously, even if what you wrote was 100% scientifically lucid and compelling, even to the aliens mining our petrified knees as fossil fuels 850,000 years into the future who happen to find your book on a flash drive -- what makes humans have highs of brilliance and lows of self-perpetuating pain is that we are notoriously difficult with self-evaluation, and sometimes especially more in the face of overwhelming truth.
So why not write those stories? You've seen what works in the office. You've seen tumors of all kinds, body cannibalism of the worst order, and even my father's sea of cancer cells across his brain, which gave me the image of a halo as he went from brilliant doctor to a squealing child with an IQ of 35 in a matter of days.
Your keys will organically emerge from the stories you write as you tell them, if told truthfully. I mean, the list of keys you developed HAD to come to you as you retold the narrative of what you went through personally, right? That story is easily just as good for the proletariat. The fact that you also have the backdrop of witnessing EVERY cancer treatment's efficacy or lack thereof - from therapies in trials, articles in journals, hearsay at the doctorly water cooler about a new clinic in Mexico that grows something called cancer beans in horse manure - you've seen it all.
I feel comfortable writing my book about my pain experience because I have the UNIQUE POSITION of 1. being a young athletic guy who has trained among the world's strongest men, who was diagnosed with a pain condition that usually is only affixed to women in the flails of menstruation, 2. having an allopathic, hard-line scientific doctor as a father, who told me that my pain was all in my head, yet not believing it because it came from someone who helped cause the pain.
You have the UNIQUE POSITION of 1. being an allopathic hemotologist/oncologist, 2. being someone who has seen how stress relief has the most favorable properties for cancer recovery versus the alternative placebos, 3. being someone who solved his own pain while in practice, only to see a logical progression of what you learned about pain in life applied to the courses of other diseases. Is it radical? I don't really think so. I think a cancer doctor who pits a deep stress relief model against the bestiary of treatments outside the realm of allopathic, statistics-driven treatment would be refreshing, just like how Dr. Sarno's book highlighted many treatments as being mere psychiatric regression towards the mean.
To put it simply, I would have advised my father to take your keys, keep the chemo, and enjoy life. I wish he was alive to read what you wrote. As his fear went up, his suggestibility approached infinity, and he became open to everything, which is the same as doing nothing. His treatment ultimately veered into oblivion as far as that's concerned, dying with an appointment book filled with unrefundable appointments.
Ace also wrote:
"My take on TMS books is just based on the fact that the vast majority of TMS books replicate the information in Dr. Sarno's book, with no or very little new helpful information. I see so many people on here just buying more and more books that dont contribute to their recovery. My book, if I wrote one, would have to be different, helpful, not only for recovery but for understanding. Some people (or maybe just one person) on this forum think Im on this forum so I can later write a book and get book sales- this is far from the truth and I would be tempted to not ever mention it on here if I ever wrote it for that very reason."
TMS books contain much of the same information, but not all the information in the books is equally attractive as a concept to the diversity of people who need them. Hence, you have people who write from a hard clinical angle, a hard spiritual angle, a mixture of everything they know, or, in the most intriguing (and generally the most experimental), everything they don't know, but think they have learned. That's going to be my book.
I think you will be able to write about understanding because you came to understand it. Just teach as you go.
You've got the three acts already: 1. Medical education and career. 2. Pain and Sarno. 3. What you've learned about pain as applied to the same patients you've always had. When it becomes the story of YOUR transformation, people will be able to understand and recovery, because it's hit them on a human level. People who read Dr. Sarno's books, as Dr. Alexander so brilliantly stated, tend to have a cognitive shift, not a deep shift in life. Your book will by design already be beyond Dr. Sarno's because you're dealing with diseases beyond back pain. And furthermore, by showing these to be your experiences, you approach us as a human being, and not a marketing algorithm. It's not just that there are too many books about the mind-body connection, it's that there are too many books about EVERYTHING telling people how to be less miserable. People must develop abandonment issues when they read conflicting ideas in books.
Buying books is a great way to 1. enhance understanding 2. distract from pain. Cycling from book-to-book is a very well-established phenomenon for those in misery, who can cloak it in the favorable auspice of "being informed." Look at Rik & Co., who will not be satisfied until he's constructed a Borgesian map of the human condition, and is a poster child for the nervously afflicted.
I buy movies when I am afraid of writing my own. This can soothe, but that mostly only happens when I watch the DVD extra interviews and see how hard art was for the director too. That's what people need. Your gift, Ace, is not just what you've said, but who you've become.
Your passion is apparent. Steve Ozanich's passion is apparent. Passion is just a bottled-up book.
"The Cancer Strain" by Ace1. Or something you actually like might work too. But I know it's important, and I wish you and anyone else reading this the best.
-- Jared
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RageSootheRatio
Canada
430 Posts |
Posted - 05/30/2013 : 18:55:01
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| Jared, I really don't know what to say but wanted to reply in some way. just 'wow.' what an unbelievably moving exchange. I am sorry for the loss of your father. I am grateful for your sharing. ~RSR |
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Ace1
USA
1040 Posts |
Posted - 05/30/2013 : 19:10:18
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| Jered, based on your response to Sylvia's thread I just knew you had some involvement with cancer, I just didn't want to ask in case you didn't want to talk about it. Yes you make very good points and like I said your understanding of how he just went through the motions with these healers was not helpful as it wasn't true peace. Remember Jared that dr sarno did not write a book on tms till the late 80s despite understanding tms in the early 70s. You see I am still learning, I'm getting better at understanding, the more I understand, the better I can teach it. I think there will be a point where the learning plateaus. This would be the best time for me to write it up. God bless you and you family for your loss and thank you for sharing your story with us. |
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apace41
USA
15 Posts |
Posted - 05/31/2013 : 09:56:31
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Jared,
I am at a loss because your writing and the story you tell combine in an extraordinarily powerful post. I look forward to your book because if it is that post multiplied by several hundred, it will be quite compelling and a great read.
I, too, am sorry for your loss.
Andy |
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balto
839 Posts |
Posted - 05/31/2013 : 10:29:38
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Jared, I keep turning to my dictionary while reading your post. Man you used lot of words that I don't normally see in everyday life here. Anyway, it was beautiful reading so thank you for sharing and very sorry about your loss.
Ace, if you ever decide to write a book on mindbody can I have a free copy. My wife did give me a raise this year. 
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No, I don't know everything. I'm just here to share my experience. |
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jegol71
USA
78 Posts |
Posted - 05/31/2013 : 11:50:13
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Thank you so very much for moving me with your responses. I decided to post instead of working on a book chapter, but it seems I ended up writing part of one anyways.
I think my TMS tale will be important for narrative reasons beyond information acquisition. The story between my father and myself I believe has the potential to engage a theatre audience who may not allow themselves access to self-help books like The Divided Mind, The Great Pain Deception, and Unlearn Your Pain for reasons we already know. If the contemporary mind-body dilemma cannot be satisfactorily addressed via competing self-help texts, where new and old expeditions into structuralism (mostly genomic now) create the shadow on the shelf space holding Dr. Sarno, confusing people with pain and without certainty, then perhaps the mind-body healing we've discovered can be entertained through a story not seeking to prescribe.
My biggest fear is that what I write may be considered unenjoyable, through my vocabulary and structure. But as Popeye says after shootin- up on spinach: "I yam what I yam." I will do my best to be clear and seek out a professional editor, but I also know that the language and imagery I use is an emblem of the whirring mind that gets us to TMS, with mine funneled through a vocation of words.
If anyone has suggestions or cautions beyond what has been posted, to better my clarity towards the audience, I am all-too excited to listen. My biggest problem working in the screenplay form has been over-exposition, but I suppose for a memoir that is less of a worry.
I look forward to finishing it and giving it away for free. Thank you for the support; this year I have opened my mouth more on the site, which has deepened my understanding of community, and how I fit into it. Indeed I do.
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Edited by - jegol71 on 05/31/2013 11:57:06 |
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apace41
USA
15 Posts |
Posted - 05/31/2013 : 12:27:47
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quote:
Originally posted by jegol71
My biggest fear is that what I write may be considered unenjoyable, through my vocabulary and structure. But as Popeye says after shootin- up on spinach: "I yam what I yam." I will do my best to be clear and seek out a professional editor, but I also know that the language and imagery I use is an emblem of the whirring mind that gets us to TMS, with mine funneled through a vocation of words.
There is always a place in the literary world for people who use a strong and varied vocabulary. Depending on the audience you target, you can give different direction to a professional editor (which is a crucial part of the process given your "fears"). Don't constrain yourself during the writing process. Live with the Popeye notion as you put it, lest you censor your ideas trying to find a way to "dumb them down." Assuming you have written most, if not all, of these posts off the top of your head, I wouldn't lose any sleep about structure and your work being comprehended as intended.
Andy |
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tennis tom
USA
4749 Posts |
Posted - 05/31/2013 : 13:32:18
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quote:
Originally posted by balto
Ace, if you ever decide to write a book on mindbody can I have a free copy.
I want a FREE copy too!, since I'm sure I was inspirational to Ace. And, how about a mention on the dedication page. If my TMS/arthritic right hip has a spontaneous healing, and I can run on land again, I'll be sure to give an honorable mention to Ace in MY book.
Cheers,
tt/lsmft
==================================================
DR. SARNO'S 12 DAILY REMINDERS:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8D7w0IUIPU
www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0dKBFwGR0g
TAKE THE HOLMES-RAHE STRESS TEST
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holmes_and_Rahe_stress_scale
Some of my favorite excerpts from _THE DIVIDED MIND_ :
http://www.tmshelp.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=2605
==================================================
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." Jiddu Krishnamurti
"Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional." Author Unknown
"Happy People Are Happy Putters." Frank Nobilo, Golf Analyst
"Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint." Mark Twain and Balto
"The hot-dog is the noblest of dogs; it feeds the hand that bites it." Dr. Laurence Johnston Peter
"...the human emotional system was not designed to endure the mental rigors of a tennis match." Dr. Allen Fox
======================================================
"If it ends with "itis" or "algia" or "syndrome" and doctors can't figure out what causes it, then it might be TMS." Dave the Mod =================================================
TMS PRACTITIONERS:
John Sarno, MD
400 E 34th St, New York, NY 10016
(212) 263-6035
Dr. Sarno is now retired, if you call this number you will be referred to his associate Dr. Rashbaum.
"...there are so many things little and big that are tms, I wouldn't have time to write about all of them": Told to icelikeaninja by Dr. Sarno
Here's the TMS practitioners list from the TMS Help Forum:
http://www.tmshelp.com/links.htm
Here's a list of TMS practitioners from the TMS Wiki:
http://tmswiki.org/ppd/Find_a_TMS_Doctor_or_Therapist
Here's a map of TMS practitioners from the old Tarpit Yoga site, (click on the map by state for listings).:
http://www.tarpityoga.com/2007_08_01_archive.html |
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plum
United Kingdom
641 Posts |
Posted - 05/31/2013 : 14:00:51
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Jared, my love,
Remain unshakably loyal to your gifts. Those of us lucky enough to be here, counting our scars, lay ear to mouth. The soul's first passion is to live, it's second is to reflect. I rejoice in your reflections and thank the gods for you.
Ace1, I rather like the image of you as a mad satyr. Do muse on Jared's words. |
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To Ace: On Cancers, Stress, Healing and Writing
