Good health care is as much about things of the heart
as it is about science and technology.
Actually, it is more.
Our answer to cancer is something we create – together. You will receive my care and encouragement in this most important goal for your life: prescribed treatments; nutrition and lifestyle counseling; teaching and inspiration. I offer my medical expertise, my compassion, and my support for your transformation. What you bring – your diagnosis, your current condition, and your hopes and your fears – are the raw materials for this possible transformation. Our acceptance of each other, and of the various therapies to be used, are of primary importance. May questions and answers flow between us until there is nothing left but the clear resolve to go ahead and create our answer to cancer – together.
Cancer schedules an unexpected and finite limitation to life; that is its nature. In response to this threatening limitation, contemporary physicians can do many wonderful things with the tools of their art. And then they can do only so much. They face their own kind of limitation. One of my patients had me understand this about the workings of the human body from a song of David – Psalm 139: “..I am wonderfully and fearfully made: marvelous are thy works.” So are we all made, and marvelous it is indeed. And mysterious. Ultimately, though armed with the many valuable truths of modern science, the intricacies of being human remain pretty much a mystery to all of us. Our understanding is not complete; it is limited. There is thus no perfectly developed formula of medicine to grant one assurance of success in working against this disease: there is no cure for cancer. What there is is the possibility and the opportunity to know these limitations, to face them, and to then overcome them – together. With your understanding and your effort, and this good medicine and my very best wishes, may all our limitations disappear.
This philosophical prologue is my wordy attempt to communicate something of 1) my caring for people faced with cancer, 2) my hopes for a new method of treating them, and 3) reality as I understand it. Many years ago, a particular physician, skeptical of my proposals about this new therapy, asked me somewhat arrogantly: “Dr. Ayre, do you believe it is possible to eradicate death from the human condition?” In spite of his somewhat insulting tone, I managed to reply, “No. I see us as being on a line where at one end we cure nothing, and at the other end we cure everything. Right now, we are here (indicating the half closer to the ‘curing-nothing’ end) and my motive is for us to go this way (pointing to the ‘curing-everything’ end).” I still feel that way.
Now for the technical component. Comprehensive management of malignancy, or cancer, calls for three things:
1) a method for treating the cancer,
2) nutrition & etc for restoration of immune function, and
3) mind-body techniques.
A heartfelt acceptance and compliance with these principles will support the commitment to control of and recovery from this disease. Details of these approaches are as follows:
1) The chosen method of treating cancer available at Contemporary Medicine is combination chemotherapy administered – in non-toxic, reduced doses – in conjunction with Insulin Potentiation Therapy (IPT). The choices of chemotherapy drugs used for individual cancers corresponds to standard drug combinations developed through the years of clinical trials conducted under the auspices of the National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute. Typically, the doses of anticancer medications used in IPT treatments are reduced by 75% to 90% from standard doses. (Please see the brochure entitled “Insulin Potentiation Therapy (IPT)” for a more complete description of this treatment modality),
2) The program of nutritional support for enhancing immune function recommended for patients at Contemporary Medicine combines a focus on diet and nutritional and herbal supplementation when warranted. We do not subscribe to any one type or approach to diet.
3) Mind-Body techniques are the most recent addition to comprehensive plans of cancer management. Being the newest, they are also the most undefined. While there may be one pill that everyone might be able to swallow, there is no one particular kind of Mind-Body technique meeting with everyone’s needs. Psychoneuroimmunology – or PNI – is a technical term gaining popularity in this field. The component parts of this word indicate that there is an association between the mind, the nervous system, and the immune system. Different kinds of practices identified here include relaxation-visualization exercises with guided imagery, journaling and working with affirmations, different kinds of massage therapy, and different kinds of experiential/ emotional release therapies. Another new word that plays an important role in one’s perspective on Mind-Body medicine is “misoneism.” This word is defined as ‘the fear of change and the hatred of new things,’ and it is part of the hard-wiring of our human personality. Finding the inner strength to rise above this instinctive resistance to change is a lot of what Mind-Body medicine is all about. Overcoming it sooner than later is the constant challenge. There are two little sayings that fit in nicely here — both in relation to the challenges of Mind-Body medicine as well as to issues of compliance with the nutritional program. These are: “If you keep on doing what you’ve always done, you’re going to keep on getting what you’ve always got” and this from the Fulani tribe in Africa:”God will not drive flies away from a tailless cow.”
Conclusion
The ultimate responsibility to be faced in one’s personal war on cancer, as well as the ultimate paradox in it, is to be able to accept “come what may” out of the efforts you make — either with gratitude, or with graciousness. Either kind of clinical outcome here — be it a “success” or be it a “failure” — comes with its own mark of victory.
In victory, these experiences thus being equal, I would opt for success and for joy and for love in this life. This medicine of effort, when done and worked at, becomes the medicine of joy. All the staff at Contemporary Medicine and myself offer you our prayers and our very best wishes for these things in your life.