Living Time - To Transform Your Cancer Journey!

This book, titled "Living Time - Faith and Facts to Transform Your Cancer Journey" is an easy and straight forward read and I find most of the content very practical and useful. What make this book special is it's author, Dr. Bernadine Healy, is not only a pioneer and leading medical doctors in the field of cancer, she herself is a cancer survivor.

May be it's God's plan, may be it's just co-incidental, it's so dramatic that it was on the Valentine's Day in 1999 that Dr Healy was informed that she has a rare case of brain tumor. Like what she wrote in the book "Here I was in the prime of life, and fairly diligent about all the healthy habits I had preached so reverently for decades. Though a cardiologist by training, I had also earned my stripes in the war on cancer: I was then the dean of the College of Medicine and Public Health at Ohio State University, where I had been expanding the school's cancer genetics program. Years before, I had headed the Research Institute of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, where I built it's first cancer biology department. And as director of the National Institute of Health in the early 1990s, I oversaw the National Cancer Institute and participated in its 1991 celebration of twenty years of the National Cancer Act, which brought us the war on cancer. ..." She further elaborated her feeling for the moment: "At that long moment of discovery, looking up into the sad, drawn face of my husband, I knew that all of our medical expertise combined would not help us cope with this numbing news. No matter who we are, from whatever background, we all feel the same chill upon hearing the C word. It's a universal fact: when serious illness strikes, we are the same vulnerable souls." The sarcastic face of the reality is a practical joke in reality, and it's a dark humor! A medical expert spending her whole life fighting cancer is now pronounced a death penalty of brain tumor.(*Hahahah! I am in tears!)

What I like about Dr Healy is that she promotes the idea that doctors are the servant of the patients and not "the Lord" of patients. Like the wisdom of Sir William Osler, one of the founding doctors of John Hopkins Hospital, said "From the standpoint of medicine as an art for the prevention and cure of disease, the man who translates the hieroglyphics of science into the plain language of healing is certainly more useful." And this surely will be a better world if all medical doctors can keep this in mind when they are talking to their patients.

Dr Healy provided also some useful tips in "Finding Your Way". She illustrated that "Cancer's path can be rocky, and each of us needs to find our own way in what is an intensely personal experience." and this includes:
- Catch your breath
- Control what you can
- Stay constructive
- Avoid the anger trap
- Look for the humor
- Insist on respect
- Nourish your spirit

Like any other advises, some is easier said than done. Meantime, I do encourage us to start trying as without trying, it's doomed to fail (and will have the chance of success)!