When the Cancer-stricken simply won’t listen to Reason
By now, you should have realized that even if someone has cancer, all is not lost. Hope is only futile once the patient is actually dead. But suppose someone you know has cancer; you give them this book and any other information about natural healing possibilities you have learned about, and that person simply brushes it all off as if it didn’t matter, as if their only hope were to resort to chemo; or else, they act as though they were lost no matter what they do?
Such a person might say things that on the surface seem “reasonable”, for instance:
“Why should I try methods that haven’t been scientifically proven? If anybody knows what might help me, it’ll be the doctors, right? And besides, why should I change my diet, and even my life-style, if I’m going to die soon anyway?”
By this point in the book, I’m sure you will be able to give logical responses to those objections, and in a perfect world, your sick acquaintance would then heed what you say, accept it, and begin to take all those health-restoring measures in order to recover, or at the very least, to greatly improve the odds of recovery.
Unfortunately, this is not a perfect world, and people sure aren’t perfect, either!
Your acquaintance might still resist, and reject any positive suggestion you may have.
The question here is therefore:
How much should we dare to impose what we know on that person? How vehemently should we insist that he or she not simply “do what other people” do, taking the route that “doctors recommend” – doctors that, as we have seen, are often totally ignorant of the fact that chemo has been proven to actually not help at all for many types of cancers; doctors who stand to make a lot of money should the patient accept chemo?
You might think that the facts presented in this book should be enough to convince anybody to think long, hard, and critically before even considering chemotherapy.
Nonetheless, I can tell you from experience that this isn’t always the case. Yet the reason for the apparent stubbornness of some people who have cancer, for their refusal to see the situation clearly and logically, can well be something that has nothing to do with the weak arguments they employ.
Instead, they resist sound advice because deep down inside, they have not only given up all hope, but worse: subconsciously, they actually want to die.
As painful as it might be for the friends and family members of the afflicted to even entertain this possibility, it is possible that “death from cancer” is part of that person’s subconscious “life plan”. If you are religious in a conventional sense, you might express this differently: it might be “God’s will” that that person die soon, of cancer.
I myself believe that ultimately, we ourselves shape our lives to an extent that most don’t realize. (Although most of this “shaping” occurs at an unconscious level).
Nevertheless, we can never be sure of exactly what forces are at work in our lives. Therefore, we can never have certainty about whether or not dying of cancer is simply a “tragic event”, or whether it might perhaps be a proper and fitting end to a certain individual’s time here on earth. And because we cannot be sure of these things, we must seriously ponder the question of just how much we should allow ourselves to insist that the patient listen to our well-founded advice.
I myself had to wrestle with this question on a number of occasions, when people I knew had cancer: my mother, a friend, my father-in-law, and my wife’s aunt. As you already know, my mother chose to not use chemo (a wise decision, since as I later learned, chemo never helps for that type of cancer, and thus would have merely hastened her demise). The other three individuals all went the chemo route, and all three died miserably within months.
In each case, I tried to impart all the information I could, yet it largely fell on deaf ears. Naturally, I thought that perhaps I should be more insistent; that I should risk even argument in order to make it clear to them that they must do everything possible to strengthen their immune system, to change their patterns of thinking, their life-style, etc.
However, after long and careful thought, I came to the conclusion that that would not be the best path, for perhaps this was the way they had chosen to depart life, and that I had to respect that choice. “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink” as the saying goes. Or in this case, “You can lead a person to reason, but you can’t make him think”.
Forgive that touch of humor. It is in reality my way of dealing with the very painful realization that sometimes, no matter what we do, people won’t listen, and we have to accept that fact, even if it means having to suffer the loss that their death represents.
I wish I could say just how far you should go to get your point across to someone who has cancer, and yet (for example) continues to smoke, drink, eat poorly, etc. On the one hand, it is your ethical duty to try to help that person modify his behavior in order to improve his chances of survival. Yet on the other hand, if he resists all of your advice, there may come a point where it is best for you to just distance yourself (at least emotionally) and let things take their course.
In any case, criticizing, cajoling, nagging, and the like, should always be avoided. Instead, speak with the voice of reason, and always make it plain that you care about that person, and that if you occasionally seem “bothersome” with all of your suggestions, you are doing it because you truly care, and fervently desire that your loved one recover his or her health.
Finding the perfect balance between playing an active role in persuading a cancer patient to make essential changes in his life, and accepting the somber realization that possibly, death by cancer is what is “meant to be” is no easy task. Nonetheless, if, when talking to the afflicted, you always approach the topic with an attitude of genuine concern and true love, your message will have a greater chance of getting through. And if, despite your best efforts, the sick person simply refuses to make any changes at all, at least you will always know that you did the best you could.
This may seem to be a weak consolation, but there are times in life when it is the best we can get.