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Relay for Life

Photo courtesy http://www.facebook.com/pages/Damian-and-Nicky-on-974-MOREFM/83550471126
Yesterday I took part in the Relay for Life, the cancer society's annual fundraising and consciousness raising event. I arrived early, saw the teams from the Diocese of Dunedin, and from Anglican Family Care, and went to the official tent to collect the purple sash which marked me as a cancer survivor. Clemency wore a green one, given to those who have supported loved ones through cancer. The event this year was held in the Forsyth Barr stadium, so it was weatherproof. It's a great event with a sort of carnival atmosphere. Organisations and businesses raise teams who commit themselves to walking for 24 hours in relay. A small entrance fee is paid and the teams raise money through sponsorship, so a considerable sum is accumulated to pay for cancer research and for the excellent supportive work of the cancer society. Each team sets up a little headquarters and the members are inclined to deck themselves out in some sort of uniform or dress to a theme. There are balloons and food stalls and quirkily dressed people and a sound stage with continuous live music and hundereds of people walking happily round a running track.

A very moving part of any Relay for Life is the candlelight parade, when the walking track is ringed with lanterns, each one commemorating someone who has died from cancer. I missed it this year but I was there for the opening when all of us in the sashes walked the first lap of the track. It was great to be one of the elite, but given the qualifying requirement, I kind of wish I wasn't.

It's been five years since I was diagnosed, and I'm still here so I've defied some of the odds that were laid against me early in the piece. Which raises the question of why I am still here, when 7 out of 10 men with my original set of parameters aren't. Some of the answer to that is quite conventional. I have a good urologist. I had timely surgery and I had radiotherapy, and all these helped turn the statistics in my favour. But there's more to it than that.

When I was at the Gawler Institute we had a very interesting address from a researcher at Monash University's medical school. He told us that several  meta studies, that is a studies of studies of cancer showed that across all cancers, chemotherapy increased five year survival rates (that is the percentage of people left alive five years after diagnosis)  by 2%. Chemo is very effective against some cancers so the implication is that for some others it has no effect at all. By contrast, lifestyle change (that is, changes in diet, exercise patterns, spiritual practice, relaxation, stress management etc) increased 5 year survival rates by 30%. Strangely, not much hard research has gone into these phenomena. Which lifestyle changes make a difference and why? Why do "spontaneous remissions" occur? As the researcher pointed out, discover a new form of chemo that increased survival rates by 30% and you would win the Nobel prize; it's bizarre that so very little research is carried out into the whys and wherefores of lifestyle change but even more odd that very little emphasis is placed on it in the training of doctors. The result is that for those of us wearing the purple sashes, getting reliable information and sifting out the crackpot theories from the helpful stratagems is really down to us. For my own part I am certain that the diet I have been keeping for the last five years and, especially, my daily practice of meditation have kept me on the planet.

I couldn't help wondering as I circled the track how much of the money raised yesterday will be going into further chemotherapy research. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that the research is being done, and one day I may well need to take advantage of it. But there are promising, demonstrably working treatments for cancer already to hand and some of them could be effected very cheaply indeed. It doesn't cost much to teach someone to meditate or walk or change their diet. You'd think that having someone run a critical scientific eye over some of  the alternatives to radio and chemo might be really, really helpful.
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Comments

Anonymous said…
So true. The problem is there is money in selling drugs.
11 March 2013 at 13:21
Elaine Dent said…
Fascinating observation. Thanks for writing about it.
11 March 2013 at 14:52
Kelvin Wright said…
Anonymous, I fear you are right. But there is also the complete commitment of academic establishments to philosophical materialism which sees a human being purely as a body, and all diseases only as irregularities in a physical system. Also, research is done in small isolated fields of knowledge; so researchers will know, for example, a hole lot about the biochemical make up of a particular cancer cell, but no more than anybody else about the functioning of a human being as a complex physical, psychological and spiritual being. So "holistic" solutions are not even imagined, let alone researched.
11 March 2013 at 17:20
Anonymous said…
Kevin
When I wife was ill with cancer we out in the car one day and were almost involved in a car crash. The after effect of the that trauma was very surprising. My wife condition actually improved. I think some people just give up and their body listens to that. But it also listens to us when we stand and fight.
11 March 2013 at 17:56
Anonymous said…
Thank you Kelvin. Working on the internal stuff is hard but brings a freedom and lightness that no surgery or medical intervention can ever bring about. So how do we influence researchers to look at holistic matters rather than just the body? The bringing of repressed memories into the light will do as much if not more for my healing as any surgery will.
11 March 2013 at 17:59
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