BROWDERBOOKS
Wild New York
US Review of Books gave a good review of my latest historical novel, Forbidden Brownstones, and has offered me (for a price) silver stickers saying RECOMMENDED. And why do I purchase them? Because at book fairs I have seen how anything recommending a book -- a bright cover, a quote from a good review, a bright gold or silver seal promoting it -- nudges a potential buyer toward a sale. They are tempted to buy, but need a little encouragement to take a chance on an author and a book they never heard of. So a silver sticker saying RECOMMENDED -- even if from an outfit unknown to them -- provides that extra nudge. Gimmicky? Perhaps. But that's how book fairs work.
US Review of Books RECOMMENDED Rating
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Cancer: My Adventure with
Alternative Medicine
Cancer: a word that terrifies. A scourge, a killer. When the figures are in, in the U.S. alone some 608,570 mortalities are expected in 2021. Scary. #Cancer
For me, it all started with my annual physical back in January 1994. When my doctor reviewed the results, she reported: “You’re a bit anemic. If you were a menstruating woman, I wouldn’t be concerned. But for a man, it’s suspicious. I’ll refer you to a gastroenterologist for a colonoscopy.”
I didn’t know what a colonoscopy was, and I couldn’t even pronounce “gastroenterologist,” but it seemed that I was bleeding internally. Having no symptoms, I I doubted if anything was amiss.
I soon saw a gastroenterologist, Dr. Malinovsky, a genial older man who gave me instructions for the colonoscopy. Primarily, I had to fast, drink some foul-tasting liquid called MoviPrep to clear out my bowels, and then, the following morning, show up at my medical center at Third Avenue and 96th Street at an ungodly hour.
So on April 5, 1994, I showed up, undressed from the waist down, lay flat on my belly on an examination table, got sedated, and let the good doctor rape me gently with a finger-thick, lithe black snake of a tube that he poked into my rectum. On a table next to me, right at eye level, was a screen that showed what was happening in color. It beat any TV that I had ever seen, flashing red, orange, red, as white dots of popcorn flitted across.
“The colon wall,” said the doctor. “Now we’ll make this turn.”
His assistant plied my belly; cramps. I hardly noticed, riveted by the screen’s polychrome display: green splotches, egg yolk, orange peels, then ever receding grottoes, tunnels, and reefs where light had never been. “Another turn,” said the doctor. More massaging, cramps. On the screen, crypts of cantaloupe, brown lichens, candied yam.
“There,” said the doctor quietly, “is what we’re looking for.”
Nested in a niche, blobs of an aborted mushroom, a wrinkled, hunched pink worm.
“Biopsy,” says the doctor. On the screen, tweezers appeared, tweaked it. A red kiss, then another. “A polyp or a cancer,” said the doctor. “Probably a cancer.”
Under sedation, I took this gently, philosophically, almost as if he were speaking of someone else. I felt distantly vulnerable, important.
One last look at the screen: sleeping, coiled pink muscle of eel. My enemy, my threat. Almost an embryo, mine, weirdly beautiful.
Cancer: the dread of the word. Not some infection from outside, but my own body in rebellion, its cells in disorder, engendering a small lethal worm of a tumor that could kill me.
Surgery was ordered, as soon as possible. Another baffling word came up: metastasis, meaning the spread of cancer from its original site. I did some research. Survival rate of colon surgery before metastasis: 90 percent. After metastasis:10.
I saw the surgeon, a man with a friendly, reassuring smile. “A common surgery; I do two or three a week. We’ve got lots more colon than we need; you can spare some, not to worry. Unless, of course, the lymph nodes are involved.” He scheduled it for May 3, 1994.
The results of the biopsy came through: yes, malignancy, requiring immediate action; the date of the surgery was advanced to April 19. Also, there was a lovely photograph in color showing the bulbous, pink tumor nesting in my gut.
Surgery would remove the tumor, but unless I did something, the cancer would return. I consulted a holistic MD, who took one look at the photograph and said emphatically, “Get that thing out of you as soon as you can!” For my follow-up treatment after surgery, he recommended an alternative cancer treatment: antioxidants -- vitamins and two supplements that I had never heard of: Quercetin and Co Q-10.
At noon on April 19 I checked into Beth Israel Hospital on the Lower East Side. Soon I was in my room, donning a hospital monkey gown and awaiting the residents, the nurses, the anesthesiologist, and whomever else might have reason to see me. The following morning I was taken down for surgery. In the room adjoining the room of the actual operation, I chatted amiably with one of the staff, a motherly black woman of about forty who told me she was trying to stop smoking; I encouraged her and wished her well. Then, nothing; the anesthesia had done its job. Soon enough I was back in my room.
For early word of the surgery results I queried the hospital residents on their daily morning round. Sure enough, one had witnessed the surgery. “A tumor as big as a golf ball," he said. "Probably in there a good ten years. But the liver looked fine.” Later I would learn that his comment on the liver was encouraging, since that was where colon cancer usually spread next.
In time, liberated from a catheter and intravenous feeding, followed by the joys of hospital food, I went home. Visiting nurses came daily to change the dressing on my wound. One of them told me that even after a surgery wound has closed, the body continues healing within, though the patient is completely unaware of it. I found this wonderfully reassuring.
The wound closed; the surgeon’s job was done. In a last session he explained my situation. Of 25 lymph nodes removed with the tumor and examined, one had cancer. Metastasis; they had operated just in time. Cancer, he said, is like a fire in a house. At first it is small, confined to one room; if, outside the room, you put your hand to the wall, you would feel no heat. Then the fire spreads throughout the room; if you put your hand to the wall, you would for sure feel heat. This is where I was. Then the fire burns through the wall and spreads to the whole house: metastasis: only 10 percent survive.
Chemotherapy was recommended. The surgeon himself was neutral; some of his patients did chemo, some did not. He suggested that I talk to the oncologist and hear what he had to say, then decide. So I did.
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| Chemotherapy |
The oncologist proved to be a nice little man with a mustache -- less a threat than the look of your favorite uncle. In a soft voice he explained that, in my case, the chances of recurrence were 40 percent; chemo could reduce it to 20. I would come once a week for several weeks and let them drip chemicals into my veins. I said I would ponder the matter and let him know.
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| This ... ? |
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| ... or this? |
Ponder I did not, for I had already made up my mind. I was doing volunteer work for the Whole Foods Project, a small nonprofit advocating a nutritional approach to AIDS and cancer. There I could take cooking lessons and absorb a different, unorthodox approach to healing. Would I rather lie passively and let them drip alien substances into me, or take an active role in my healing, learning to cook and eat vegan? Chemo, like radiation, was the best that mainstream medicine could offer, but it involved unpleasant side effects, some of them horrendous, and would treat the symptom only, not the cause of the cancer. For me, an easy choice: I chose an alternative cancer treatment and went vegan. When the oncologist phoned, I told him I would not do chemo.
So I took cooking classes and learned to eat vegan: lots of fruits and veggies, lots of beans and whole grains, less salt, no sugar, no meat or dairy. I discovered the wonders of barley pilaf, apple and sweet potato roast, sea vegetables, leeks, and millet and tempeh loaf -- all delicious. It was easy, it was fun. Then suddenly, one day, there were severe cramps in my abdomen. Lying down didn’t help, nor did standing up and pacing in the apartment. I was desperate; it was hell. Then, just as suddenly, the cramps stopped, stopped cold. I contacted my surgeon. My body, he explained, was adjusting to the surgery.
There would be cramps again, twice; both times they stopped as suddenly as they began. After that, no more cramps. I went out birdwatching again, and in June I marched joyously with the Whole Foods Project in the madness of the annual Gay Pride Parade. In the following years periodic colonoscopies revealed either nothing or a small polyp easily removed. I had healed.
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| No, I'm not in this one. But you get the idea. Diana |
My cancer never returned, so my cancer story has a happy ending; many do not. Lacking professional credentials, and knowing how people cling to their habits, I was not one to preach alternative cancer procedures to others. But on two occasions I did, for they involved close friends whose fate greatly concerned me. Both listened, neither was persuaded. They lived orthodox, and orthodox they died. It hurt.
Alternative treatments for cancer are controversial, to say the least, and medical orthodoxy takes a dim view of them, stressing that they may not be harmful in themselves, but become harmful if they displace standard treatments. I only know that orthodox surgery saved my life, and holistic medicine and a vegan diet prevented recurrence.
I still have the report of my final diagnosis, and the color photographs of the tumor that tried to kill me. The tumor: weirdly beautiful, I thought at the time. Today, obscene.
© 2021 Clifford Browder
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